Ancestors

Toot

Written by Dresden S on 2024-10-22 at 19:12

(Thread) I don't really talk about this a lot online for fear of being Eaten by Academia, but "Death of the Author" as an essay is fundamentally flawed in some really obvious ways. To clarify, I'm not going to argue that literary interpretations should always use biographical information to determine meaning; the human brain is more complex than "what I see irl -------> what I write on piece of paper"

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Descendants

Written by Dresden S on 2024-10-22 at 19:17

However, I do take issue with Barthes' claim that individual interpretation is the only thing that matters. I think that individual interpretation is incredibly important for litcrit, but, for instance, an individual interpreting Kafka's "The Trial" without any knowledge of Kafka's existence as a Jewish anarchist in turn of the century Austria-Hungary is going to be a disastrously incomplete, even pragmatically empty, interpretation.

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Written by Dresden S on 2024-10-22 at 19:20

I'm pretty sure Anna Seghers' experience as a German-Jewish refugee to Mexico via France during the Holocaust is pretty important to keep in mind when formulating an interpretation of her novel "Transit", which is about German Jews attempting to flee to Mexico via France during the Holocaust...

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Written by Chip Butty on 2024-10-22 at 21:03

@anarqueer I like to think of various literary schools as being "yes, and also", but picking a fight brings in readers

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