Authorship's Wake Writing after theDeath of the Author : Writing after the Death of the Author

What happens when a radical new idea becomes the status quo? When one generation of thinkers demolishes a set of commonly held assumptions, how do members of the next generation respond? These are the large-scale questions that motivate Authorship's Wake , which examines the aftermath of the 1960s critique of the author, epitomized by Roland Barthes's famous essay, The Death of the Author. Authorship's Wake examines the enduring legacy of the critique of the author as an all-controlling figure determining the meaning of literary texts-a critique that, in turn, participates in the broader poststructuralist interrogation of the rational, autonomous, and self-transparent Enlightenment subject. The book's archive consists of texts by writers who either directly participated in this critique, as Barthes did, or whose intellectual formation took place in its immediate aftermath. These writers include some who are known primarily as theorists (such as Judith Butler), others who are known primarily as novelists (Zadie Smith and David Foster Wallace), and yet others whose texts are difficult to categorize (the autofiction of Chris Kraus, Sheila Heti, and Ben Lerner and the autotheory of Maggie Nelson). All of them, Sayers's argue, are participants in an ongoing transgeneric conversation about the aesthetic, ethical, political, and economic stakes of authorship. Cover 1 Contents 6 Introduction: “Words Streaming in Your Wake” 8 1. Sole Authors 8 2. Writing After 16 3. Communication, Intention, Agency, Labor 22 Chapter 1 Communication: Maggie Nelson and the Literary Text as Letter 26 1. Introduction 26 2. Letters 28 2.1. The Literary Text as Letter 28 2.2. Epistolarity and The Argonauts 30 2.3. The Risks of Letter-Writing 32 2.4. Silence 34 3. Communication, Nonsense, and Space 36 3.1. “Whereof One Cannot Speak” 37 3.2. Acknowledged Nonsense 41 3.3. Space 43 3.4. The Work of the Reader 46 4. The Argonauts and the Ethics of Space 47 4.1. Fragments 49 4.2. Allusions and Family-Making 51 Chapter 2 Intention: The Inconsistent Anti-Intentionalism of Zadie Smith and Judith Butler 54 1. Introduction 54 1.1. Consulting the Oracle 54 1.2. Intention and the Authorship Debates 56 2. On Beauty and Anti-Intentionalism 59 2.1. Zadie Smith and the Return to Authorial Intention 59 2.2. On Beauty against the Critique of Intention 62 2.3. On Beauty and Psychoanalysis 64 2.4. On Beauty and Critique 67 3. The Humanities Quandary 71 3.1. Judith Butler and the Humanities Quandary 71 3.2. Howard Belsey and the Humanities Quandary 75 3.3. “In Effect If Not in Intent” 77 4. Conclusion 82 Chapter 3 Agency: Roland Barthes and the Men Who Hold Forth 84 1. Introduction 84 1.1. “Mr. Very Important” 84 1.2. “Men Explain Things to Me” in Context 86 2. Autofiction versus the Man Who Holds Forth 90 2.1. I Love Dick 90 2.2. How Should a Person Be? 94 2.3. 10:04 97 2.4. “What Is It to Hold Forth?” 99 3. Roland Barthes, Man Who Holds Forth? 105 3.1. The Charge of Apoliticism 105 3.2. Barthes and Queer Politics 107 3.3. Barthes and Post-1968 Orientalism 111 3.4. Barthes and Feminism 114 3.5. Barthes as Teacher and Author 118 Chapter 4 Labor: David Foster Wallace, Cowboy of Information 124 1. Introduction 124 1.1. Bureaucratizing Writing 124 2. Accountants, Writers, and Cowboys 129 2.1. On Amy Hungerford Not Reading DFW 129 2.2. Accountants 133 2.3. Writers 136 2.4. Cowboys 142 3. Two Broad Arcs 150 3.1. Neoliberalism and Information Work 150 3.2. Low Theory 155 Conclusion: Study Groups 160 Acknowledgments 164 Notes 166 Bibliography 203 Index 218 Authorship's Wake examines the aftermath of the 1960s critique of the author, epitomized by Roland Barthes's essay, "The Death of the Author." This critique has given rise to a body of writing that confounds generic distinctions separating the literary and the theoretical. Its archive consists of texts by writers who either directly participated in this critique, as Barthes did, or whose intellectual formation took place in its immediate aftermath. These writers include some who are known primarily as theorists (Judith Butler), others known primarily as novelists (Zadie Smith, David Foster Wallace), and yet others whose texts are difficult to categorize (the autofiction of Chris Kraus, Sheila Heti, and Ben Lerner; the autotheory of Maggie Nelson). These writers share not only a central motivating question – how to move beyond the critique of the author-subject – but also a way of answering it: by writing texts that merge theoretical concerns with literary discourse. Authorship's Wake traces the responses their work offers in relation to four themes: communication, intention, agency, and labor. "A book about writers and thinkers who were taught that the author is dead how their work consequently negotiates what it means to be an author"-- Provided by publisher