The Rebirth of the Author

Nicholas Rombles writes a great piece on the rebirth of the author.

“…Indeed, the author has grown and multiplied in direct proportion to academic dismissals and denunciations of her presence; the more roundly and confidently the author has been dismissed as a myth, a construction, an act of bad faith, the more strongly she has emerged. The recent surge in personal websites and blogs — rather than diluting the author concept — has helped to create a tyrannical authorship presence, where the elevation of the personal and private to the public level has only compounded the cult of the author. We are all authors today. We are all auteurs. We are all writers. We are all filmmakers. And we are all theorists, because what we make theorizes itself….” 

He concludes

“…Perhaps it was easy to dismiss the Author when there was so little at stake. But now, as we approach the time when it will be possible to lift the veil on our very own codes, we find that it is precisely in human authorship — with its mistakes, its errors, its slippages, its ambiguities, its reversals and contradictions, its irrationalities, its surprises — where we can reassert ourselves against the very destruction that once, because it was myth, we so eagerly desired….”

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