Authorship’s Wake: Writing After the Death of the Author – eBook

Authorship’s Wake: Writing After the Death of the Author (PDF) 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 (David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith), and yet others whose textbooks are difficult to categorize (the autofiction of Sheila Heti, Chris Kraus, and Ben Lerner; the auto theory 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 textbooks that merge theoretical concerns with literary discourse. Authorship’s Wake traces the responses their work offers in relation to four themes: intention, agency, communication, and labor.

NOTE: This sale only includes the ebook Authorship’s Wake: Writing After the Death of the Author in PDF. No access codes included.