The Death of the Author: WTF? Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author Explained

Roland Barthes’ The Death of the Author is a seminal text in the development of literary theory. Often considered the moment when structuralism gave way to poststructuralism as the dominant approach to cultural analysis, in The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes argues not only that we should not place too much emphasis on authorial intent when analysing a cultural text but also that the popular conception of the act of authorship might be altogether wrong. In this episode of What The Theory?, I aim to pr