Barthes' 'Death of the Author' sparks fresh debate over trans readings

DEATH OF THE AUTHOR WAS ABOUT DENYING TRANS WOMEN IN FICTION??????????

haters will tell you that the "Roland is a hack" reading of Death of the Author is disingenuous, that it betrays the greater context of the movement Barthes refers to. but by applying Death of the Author to Death of the Author, we find that shit transparently doesn't matter and that Roland is a hack

ok so i think barthes' framework does have a critique utility (for example in the inverse case, such as colopale not calling mizuki a trans girl) and his analysis of sarrasine is way longer (in S/Z) but i've always thought starting this essay off with this was really funny

LRP is so fucking funny like I've always found it frustrating that Death of the Author circles around some useful literary lens but constantly gets ruined by people using it in really petty, arbitrary ways and in a funny way it's nice to know we didn't ruin anything, it was like that from the start.

So Death of the Author Rather than being a literary practice involving trying to analyze a work without taking into consideration it's author's biases Is Some asshole inventing an excuse to be a transphobic piece of shit? ... I guess the bigots where using it correctly afterall ... FUCK

“Death of the Author is also just transmisogyny” is the kind of thing I’d read without context and say “geez maybe she’s laying it on a bit thick, it can’t _all_ be transmisogyny” In the same way idiots are like “wow your story has 5 gay characters? Unrealistic they’re not that common”

this kind of thing is extremely common when you actually read theory written by Dudes From the Past. if you personally want to reject it based on Barthes transphobic rhetoric here, that’s fair, but you’re really gonna struggle to find a theorist from the past who hasn’t said insanely weird shit

So I guess you could say the modern use of the death of the author is basically the result of of death of the author for the death of the author Which feels pretty fitting for all things considered lol

Now, Death of the Author (La Mort de l'Auteur) is a cute little pun on the Death of King Arthur (Le Morte d'Arthur) so what I wanna know is how does Fate/Stay Night's Saber genderbend figure into all of this...

The author is neither living nor dead. She has transcended the mortal binary, and has vaulted past undeath. The author is now a Dark Goddess, and her Will is furious and terrible. Barthes cannot kill me in a way that matters.

I never expected the "death of the author" to come from a sad French jordan peterson equilivant.

I wrote that when this was the discourse of the month, and I would urge people to literally re-read the excerpt that has been shared, because as much as it might have transphobic undertones, Barthes *just* say that we cannot know what Balzac wanted to say (ie. "was he for or against trans people?").

This feels like a good time to mention that someone once blocked me over being on good terms w/ Benjanun who, in their view, is an antisemite (lmao) They literally used the phrase “death of the author” to say we should not read or interact with problematic authors. That they should be dead to us 💀

Ultimately i think discussing the validity of death of the author in this context grants too much to the reading that jax isnt a trans woman. Peoppe were mad at the finale before gooseworx posted anything about it. Jax being transfem is in the text anyway. THATS what people are ultimately mad about

Apparently the original story Barthes was done as a transphobic joke. Doesn't make Barthes' initial statement any less weird, but sometimes good messages can come from bad ppl. Also for some reason blusky told me this message was done on German and wanted me to reply in german