Let the Authors Die? – Iterating the Gentle Derridean Euthanasia of the Author

Who is writing? Is it ‘me’, the ‘author’; is it Derrida – writing through ‘me’ as a ghost from the past, someone else, or many others? Does it have to be someone else, or could it just be ‘me’? But then, who am ‘I’[1], what constitutes/conditions my participation in this writing event? Is it possible to know for sure? Even if you find my signature at the end of this paper, can you be sure I actually wrote this by my own hand, my own uninfluenced intent? Does such a thing as uninfluenced intent even exist? And, does it matter in relation to what you read, whether I intended it or not? Going down this road of ambiguous and slightly sarcastic articulations concerning myself as an author (am ‘I’ dying as we speak?) – and later you as the reader, go some way to illustrate the issue at hand when Derrida, following Barthes, does away with the author. This ‘gentle’ euthanasia marks one of the possibly most fundamental indications made by Derrida; the idea that iteration ‘always’ – for the purpose of knowing truth/meaning – is the element which “ties repetition to alterity.”[2] As with any articulation in the Derridean complex, iteration must contain its own constituting difference within itself. It is the necessity of this ‘self’-constituting “discrepancy of a difference”, which leaves us with “the structure of the remainder, implying alteration, [which] renders all absolute permanence impossible.”[3] There is no permanence – the author must die – but for writing to be writing it must continue to be readable, “even when what is called the author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written.”[4] But since there is no guarantee about what the author intended when she/he wrote the text – or whether such scriptor consciously knew her/his own intent in full, there can only be what ‘we’ – the readers – make of it. Thus, ‘we’ the readers are the providers of meaning; a meaning which because of our own unsaturated amalgamated nature can only be even more ambiguous and indeterminate. Whatever ‘I’ think, is not from me solely, but rather a mix of continuous dilutions of influences, choices – rational as well as irrational, experiences, etc. In this sense both the author and the reader – in their total singularity – are dead. So, ‘I’ am not really here; the author in me is slowly dying as ‘my’ words spill onto the paper. Or maybe this so-called author was already dead, even before ‘I’ began.

‘I’ intervene by suggesting NO!

Even if there is no complete singular me, there are still my hands typing down these words, maybe not singular, but nonetheless mine. Whatever intent(ions) ‘I’ hold consciously or unconsciously, this text would not be without me. If the author is completely dead, and has no effect on the text, even as it leaves her/his head, we might as well replace all authors with monkeys operating typewriters. Whatever meaning is imposed on ‘my’ text, both before and after ‘I’ write it, the possibility for such meaning is articulated through ‘my’ writing and made contingent by it. There would not be anything for anyone to neither interpret nor iterate had it not been produced by an author through her/his articulations. Even with the death of the author, writing – and the signifiers thereby articulated – becomes contingent on the spatial temporality of an ‘author’ as the agent of articulation. The author can therefore not always have been dead. If the author at some point was alive, how can she/he then become completely irrelevant after her/his death? Whatever meanings are imbued on a writing, these are to some extent constituted also by the signifiers within it; signifiers ‘chosen’ by the author. How would any meaning be possible without author, receiver, nor some level of determinacy from within the articulations themselves? And since the articulations – as much as possible – are ‘chosen’ (un)consciously by the author, she/he might not be all that irrelevant after all. This does however not necessarily imply that the author is not dead in the Derridean sense. For Derrida, the death of the author seems to be ‘merely’ a signification of the suggestion that whatever the author ‘intended’, this does not necessarily directly constitute the meanings articulated by the receivers. And in a similar vein, the ‘readability’ of a writing, must remain despite the disappearance of the receiver, for the writing to be what it is. Both author and receiver can therefore die, and the text will live on regardless of their existence.

The plurality of dying authors, and whether one might live

Rather than talking about the death of the author as a singular event, such erasure of existence is a plural happening. The author dies in different senses. First and foremost, the author is dead as a singular identity. The author is furthermore dead in the sense of the possibility of ‘knowing’ her/his intent with a piece of writing, thus the lack of possibility of actually knowing what she/he intended to mean. Consequently, the author is thus also dead in the sense that the receiver’s reading of ‘her/his’ writing is not necessarily solely informed by the author.

Death of the author as a singular identity – Derrida and Sarl.

Does the author exist in her/his complete individuality? Or is the author rather some kind of composite existence? According to Derrida, one of the main reasons why the author is dead is the ‘fact’ that, she/he does not exist as a singular whole. Discussing the copyright of John R. Searle in his “Reply to Derrida”, he responds to Searle’s indebtedness as follows:

“If John R. Searle owes a debt to D. Searle concerning this discussion, then the “true” copyright ought to belong (as is indeed suggested along the frame of this tableau vivant) to a Searle who is divided, multiplied, conjugated, shared. What a complicated signature! And one that becomes even more complex when the debt includes my old friend, H. Dreyfus, with whom I myself have worked, discussed, exchanged ideas, so that if it is indeed through him that the Searle have “read” me, “understood” me, and “replied” to me, then I, too, can claim a stake in the “action” or “obligation,” the stocks and bonds, of this holding company, the Copyright Trust.”[5]

The author thus becomes a composite, an indebted entity whose text ‘springs’ from the many ‘others’ by whom she/he has been influenced, got ideas, been helped, and discussed with. There is a sense in which the author thus becomes so ‘divided’, ‘multiplied’, ‘conjugated’, ‘shared’, that it become ‘impossible’ to ascertain where the author ends and the ‘others’ begin. It even becomes questionable whether the author is not the ‘others’ from the very beginning. Is there anything which is solely his? As Derrida points out, “”société plus ou moins anonyme,” “a more or less anonymous company or corporation”” signifies the rigorousness of “ three +n authors” in the sense not only of the “debts”, but also “the entire, more or less anonymous tradition of a code, a heritage, a reservoir or arguments to which both he [Searle] and I are indebted.”[6] Thus, the author becomes the collective Sarl., the French abbreviation for “Société a responsabilité limitée” (Society with limited responsibility).[7] Such an observation seems somewhat – but not entirely – similar to the later re-formulation in Critical Realism of the concept of ‘double hermeneutics’. The critical realist signification of ‘double hermeneutics’ informs us that “a theoretically reflective scientist tries to investigate and interpret a world, which is itself meaningful … there is, first, the movement between theories and, second, the movement between the researcher, his or her explanatory models and the lay meanings.”[8] For Critical Realism, neither the ‘world’ nor the author is unaffected by ‘others’, thus the author is not a singular producer of writings, but rather a reflective, ‘divided’, ‘multiplied’, etc., composite.

The singular, signing, copyright-claiming, author is thus dead. In her/his stead we find the composite author(s) in which one is almost impossible to discern from the other. And even if one could discern them to some extent, their complexity would only grow as we would have to discern the compositions of the composite others of the author, ad infinitum. If we cannot know the singular author apart from his composite components, then the next question becomes how we can know what the intentions of the ‘author’ are?

Death of the author and her/his intentions

What does anyone intent? Can ‘I’ know? Can they – in full? And, even if we can, why does it matter what anyone intended? It seems to be commonly believed outside the circle of postmodernists, and maybe sometimes even within the circle,[9] that in order to be able to understand and/or interpret a text one must know what the ‘author’ actually intended with the text. Without such knowledge of intent, our interpretation, so ‘they’ say, would be seriously flawed, as it could then only be instructed by our ‘own’ intentions. Derrida, on the other hand, seems to think that whatever the ‘author’ intended becomes irrelevant, as it is rather what the receiver does with the text which is of interest. The author is dead. Even if we would try to reveal the intentions of the ‘author’, how would we be able to distinguish between the actual intentions and those intentions imbued on him through the influence of the ‘others’? If all ‘we’ do is somehow, to some extent, conditioned by ‘events’ ‘external’ to ourselves, then is it not illogical to talk about a singular intent of the author? Such intent would rather, like the author her/himself, become a composite of all sorts of elements. Furthermore, if the receiver inevitably will apply meanings of her/his ‘own’ regardless of the intentions, then would ‘we’ not be just as well off, by ‘killing’ off these so-called intentions, or rather realizing that when it comes to intentions, the author is dead. Laclau and Mouffe, explicated how ‘I’, the actor moves/articulates in a web of discourses, operating under the influence of various, more or less, hidden imaginaries.[10] If what we think ‘consciously’ we intent, is actually the result of a sort of ‘false’ consciousness, are those intentions actually our own, and can they be said to be real in the sense of being of our own making? If not, are in ‘fact’ the author and her/his intentions not dead? Dead in the sense of no existing in any absolute form.

If the author thus is dead as a singular identity, is dead in the sense that her/his intentions are an impossible fabrication – an “essential absence of intending the actuality of utterance,”[11] is not also the author dead as a source of informed understanding of her/his text? What then ‘informs/misleads’ ‘us’ about the text and meaning?

Death of the author – speaking from the grave?

What conditions ‘my’ understanding of a text? Is it the author, the text ‘itself’, or maybe something else? Is it possible for ‘me’ to gain anything more than a flawed insight into what informs me; to list all the ‘others’ in ‘me’? And, in order to get the ‘full’ picture, would ‘I’ not also have to list all the ‘others’ in the ‘others’, and so on, to infinity. Following the above discussion, it seems unlikely that it would, even could, be the author who informs my understanding of ‘her/his’ text. If I cannot know who, in her/his singularity the author is, then how can such a being inform me of anything.[12] Hence, the author is dead; dead in the sense of being beyond influencing ‘my’ reading of ‘her/his’ text. Rather I am informed by the ‘others’ in ‘me’. The composite ‘me’ becomes the source of ‘my’ interpretations as well as ‘my’ reiterations of the text. As ‘you’ have been able to see throughout this text (hopefully), the ‘I’ of ‘me’ is strongly indebted to a whole group of ‘others’. And even here, in ‘my’ text, it is only a small handful which I have been able to identify ‘myself’, and show them my gratitude by providing a reference to ‘their’ texts. I will not end this short paper with a copyright claim, nor did ‘I’ start it with one other than the short reference to my name, as ‘I’ would not be able to distinguish in full which parts would belong to whom of the ‘others’ in me. In a certain way this conclusion leaves one to think whether there ever were a first text, one in which the articulations belonged solely to the author – an author thus as a singular identity, ‘roaming’ the world telling the first story. The primordial author. There might have been, but for us, for our ‘world’ such speculations have become irrelevant as they refer back to times immemorial and to articulations which would since have become as small as a single molecule in the oceans of the world. We will thus have to settle with the death of the author; a death which, though plural in articulations, is founded in the lack the author’s singular identity. One result of this death is the illumination of the impossibility of a complete saturation of meaning/truth/knowledge. There are no closed boundaries, no endings, and no completeness.

The living author

Thus, if ‘I’ as an author is ‘committing suicide’ in the process of writing, is there any sense in which ‘I’ the author can be seen to be alive? What is it about the author that actually matters in relation to the writings she/he produce, if anything? Why would ‘I’ be bothered to carry out this kamikaze mission, if nothing ‘I’ add matters once it has left me?

Before ‘I’ move on, ‘I’ would like to make a small note here. What ‘I’ am about to articulate might be ‘valid’ at this very moment; but try to imagine a rather near future, when writing can be carried out completely by automatons, robots owning no allegiance or debts, other than to the programmer who created the matrix which ‘determines’ its ‘limits’; automatons which would likely be capable of creating their ‘own’ automatons. When this happens, ‘I’ would suggest, the death of the author has truly occurred. The other ‘true’ death of the author becomes possible the moment we achieve a complete separation of the mind from the body. When science steps into a phase where it is possible to leave the body behind and place ‘our’ minds in cyberspace. This might sound like science fiction, but it is nonetheless what very ‘serious’ neuroscientists are working on as we ‘speak’; and slowly succeeding in, so it seems.

But to return to the present; is there a sense in which the author survives the gentle euthanasia; a sense in which the author does maintain some kind of presence and relevance for the articulations leaving his corporal being. The first ‘key word’ here is corporal. Without the corporal being of the author there would be no writing, no articulations. It is in a symbiosis between the body and the mind that articulations are made possible. The functioning of the tongue, lips, and vocal cords; the movements of the hands (or in a rare few occasions feet); these are the part of the complex enabling articulations. In a causal sense these are necessary but insufficient parts of the causal complex conditioning the event of articulation. It might of course, with Derrida in mind, be pointed out that such life is merely of a technical essence. It does not a priori, or so it seems at least, condition the content of the articulations carried out by the author; so in this sense the author becomes nothing more than a transmitter. However, as long as articulations cannot be ‘transmitted’ without this reliance on the author, the author indeed stays alive in a very essential way. The author is thus not of complete irrelevance to the articulation, as it would not be if the author was not there.

There is a second way in which ‘I’ would like to suggest that the author survives, and maintains some level of significance for the articulations and their reiterations. This involves the possibility of choice. Though, whatever choices ‘we’ make might be conditioned by many different sources, and in many ways not ‘really’ be choices of ‘our own’; they are nonetheless choices somewhat determined by the specificity of the composition of ‘me’ as an author. In this sense after the ‘death’ of the author, the choices she/he made ‘still’ determine – to some extent – the possible iterations by the receiver. If all I chose to write in this essay was ‘mit navn er Søren’, then the possibilities for iteration would be significantly different from what iterations are possible based on what ‘I’ actually wrote. Whether it was me as an author in the singular sense, or a ‘me’ who made the choice, the possibilities for iteration would to some extent – it might be only very limited though – be conditioned by the final articulations by me; the choices ‘I’ made. If not; if the possible iterations would be ‘completely’ independent from the author, then ‘I’ could write anything and the receiver would still be able to iterate the same meaning. First of all such ‘complete’ independence seems contrary to the Derridean explication that nothing is complete; everything remains unsaturated. And, secondly, any sort of even approximated agreement over meanings would become ‘impossible’; all articulations would become nonsense.

The author is dead, yet still alive. Without the living author there could be no death. It is no longer a dichotomous relationship but one of supplementarity. The two must co-exist in a symbiosis where one fills out the ‘lack’ of what is missing in the other, and vice versa; thus supplementing each other rather than cancelling each other out. Thus the fear of dying as an author is misplaced. Instead ‘we’ should embrace our death and life in the articulations ‘we’ set upon the world; and acknowledge the plurality of our being, both as authors and as receives. To completely write off the author would be a mistake, but so would it be to only shine out light of attention upon the signatory of the text. This is why the euthanasia by Derrida is a ‘gentle’ one. Though the emphasis seems to lie with the ‘reasons’ for why the author is dead, the logic proposed in his works, should leave no doubt that without living, such death would not be possible. It would be a ‘mis’-reading to conclude that the death of the author would exclude the presence and significance of the living author; on the contrary, the death of the author exemplifies the importance of the living, articulating author.