Death of the Author

I find it a matter of pragmatism that authorship and a cult of the author, with its satellite critics, still exist today. Humans are living creatures and while the disembodied voice Roland Barthes describes is a dead thing, an artifact of communication that has come and gone and sacrificed its context and speaker in order to be read, exactly what selflessness are the "collective" entitled to, to waste a single second of this author's penning or breath by not furnishing him bread and water?

It seems to me that the quandry of the commune has never been more apparent than in Barthes' writing, in that other than artificial value that we ourselves determine, what is an individual worth but nothing who writes without limiting their text? The loss of context may be an important, enabling, and empowering phenomenon, but as anyone who has spent a moment on the internet knows that anonymity is not the gateway to a utopian discourse. Rather, it encourages stupidity, violence, and the suspension of reason, more often than not. When are those who work allowed to claim ownership and their right to benefit from their toils if we remove ownership through authorship?

That said, I don't want to advocate for either. I can see the full value of both sides of the argument and haven't squarely landed in either camp. I do know that it is worth considering, discussing and critiquing. I wrote this without knowing anything about Barthes' the man, and I didn't research him either. I felt that was the best credit that I could give to him to avoid that and write this.