Barthes' 'Death of the Author' sparks fresh debate over trans readings
DEATH OF THE AUTHOR WAS ABOUT DENYING TRANS WOMEN IN FICTION??????????
Ela Bambust 🏳️⚧️ (alleged transsexual)136Okay yes it's not literally about that but it being the first page is still wild
Ada Basilisk, Haunted Doll VTuber126haters will tell you that it wasn't, that this reading completely betrays the greater context of the movement to which Barthes refers. but, by applying Death of the Author to Death of the Author, we find that shit transparently doesn't matter and that Roland is a hack
Julie - TrexPushups102How load bearing is transphobia? I keep expecting there to be a limit but every time it is surpassed.
Luka 🏳️⚧️74“Death of the Author is also just transmisogyny” is the kind of thing I’d read without context and say “geez maybe she’s laying it on a bit thick, it can’t _all_ be transmisogyny” In the same way idiots are like “wow your story has 5 gay characters? Unrealistic they’re not that common”
Solomon "Nasty Evil Mean" Skalozub57That doesn't really surprise me. While the concept of "readers make their own interpretation" holds true, it wasn't like this essay created that idea, but a lot of people use the concept to deny the political themes in art or the nuances of character writing that make them uncomfortable.
Ali Gundam19No. Look, I'm trans, but I studied media at a university level, and part of that included analysis of Roland Barthes. And since I graduated, I've seen a LOT of misunderstandings online about what the theory is. It isn't about "I can enjoy the book even if the author is awful". But similarly, it...
Sredni Vashtar19I mean, some missing context here is that Barthes wrote an entire book analysing this exact short story which is something like ten times longer than the story itself and obsessively deconstructs every meaning of every line. So there is more to it, but in a far weirder way than it appears.
Hierophant Shelley B Woke - Living Saint of Purity🏳️⚧️🖤💜🤍 💛12Barthes was doing "What is a woman?" before it was cool.
Rose (\(ㅇㅅㅇ❀)/)10we are the source of all things.
Lazuli Gravefield6giving barthes a clown nose and pair of big red stompers
Cassandra Summerhill6YES. It's incredibly stupid. Like a Certain Type of Guy HAS ALWAYS EXISTED.
Tess is Surviving the Horrors6I wish I could find my original printout of Death of the Author from when I was a grad student. I know that one of my margin callouts was the words"PROVE IT, ASSHOLE!" in block letters, an another was just the word "RAGE!!!!!" with multiple underlines & highlighter. Grad student Tess was cooking!🔥✊🏻🔥
The great Barbossa5hitting us with the fucking.
Ash 🏳️⚧️ ΘΔ3Insane how many things are just transphobia all the way down holy shit
Muse Hunter Relma2"Death of the Author" is valid up to a limit. The exception is takes so egregiously obtuse they convey a lack of media literacy. From what I gather, Jax was subtext, but not subtle?
haters will tell you that the "Roland is a hack" reading of Death of the Author is disingenuous, that it betrays the greater context of the movement Barthes refers to. but by applying Death of the Author to Death of the Author, we find that shit transparently doesn't matter and that Roland is a hack
Ada Basilisk, Haunted Doll VTuber148oh this escaped my circle. for those unfamiliar with my style, the bit is that these posts are from the perspective of applying Death of the Author to Death of the Author (and other works by Barthes), projecting my reading of the fictional version of Barthes existing only in his writing
DAT BUNN5Your take on Death of the Author is awesome but Barthes' _Mythologies_ is a cool anthology. He was the first writer I saw do critical readings of "disposable" pop culture. I think about his essay "The World of Wrestling" a lot.
ok so i think barthes' framework does have a critique utility (for example in the inverse case, such as colopale not calling mizuki a trans girl) and his analysis of sarrasine is way longer (in S/Z) but i've always thought starting this essay off with this was really funny
👁️🍄🪸117some context tho a bit b/c balzac's work, sarassine, involves the titular character learning zambinella "isn't a castrato" and trying to kill her (and getting stabbed for it), this isn't a case of balzac being Pro-Trans, both balzac and barthes treat
trotskyist mr. beast18i just bristled that barthes here became synonymous with all of reader-centric analysis. i understand the discourse that is happening and that people are bringing death of the author up very maliciously but completely disavowing intepretation isn't great i think
specter @ 7.3 spoilers16re: mizuki since the kamikou fes event at least her (boymoding!) middle school model was labeled "middle school girl" in the internal code to match all the the other girls' equivalent models later on (compared to rui being "middle school boy")
Part Time Catgirl3Its hard to fully voice an opinion/analysis in 300 characters, lots of people avoid nuance when it come to discourse like that, lot of people lack the context to fully "get" the thing they talk about, people tend to cherry pick rather than read it in full etc etc
LRP is so fucking funny like I've always found it frustrating that Death of the Author circles around some useful literary lens but constantly gets ruined by people using it in really petty, arbitrary ways and in a funny way it's nice to know we didn't ruin anything, it was like that from the start.
Kayin30Honestly the best use of the less stupid, modern use of "Death of the Author" is honestly @aqoc.bsky.social's character videos that talks about long established characters only in terms of what goes on on-screen and in the manual.
Kiri19Insane how much it feels like the useful, good-faith interpretation of the concept as a potential way to critically explore media arose almost on accident from society losing a game of telephone that apparently started with the transmisogynist version of The Curtains Are Blue.
Ada Basilisk, Haunted Doll VTuber12idk if you saw the rest of my posts in the thread, but while i recognize its concept as useful i ALSO think applying death of the author to every one of roland barthes' writings is something that consistently yields hilarious results bsky.app/profile/comf...
Faye9i'm destroying my computer monitor with my teeth. i'm snapping my keyboard in half like a fortune cookie
Sixfortyfive3I can't remember the last time I felt this smug.
Scathach, Mistress's Loving Wife3I like cottoned on to the idea that DotA could be used to discount queerness in text because imagine going to AP English and reading The Picture of Dorian Gray and picking up on the gay subtext but not being told Oscar Wilde was a gay man.
This feels like a good time to mention that someone once blocked me over being on good terms w/ Benjanun who, in their view, is an antisemite (lmao) They literally used the phrase “death of the author” to say we should not read or interact with problematic authors. That they should be dead to us 💀
Dani Finn 🐙 🏳️⚧️ 📚28My main point is that “death of the author” means whatever you want it to mean when you’re attacking or defending authors
Benjanun Sriduangkaew @ Persephone Effect out now20the antisemite claim is because I called someone a rodent who uses the online moniker 'Mouse'
Abigail Gloom, "Better Angels" Out Now!9Bet this person still reads HP cause "It's just so important to me" or some shit.
Maddie Adrasteia3I once had someone tell me that following Bee violated his boundaries and so he was going to block me and like that's fine block me but who I follow has no bearing on other people's boundaries
Thorn3...it's not social death of the author....?
Emily2I will occasionally get blocked by a bunch of people i've never interacted with and despite having posted nothing all that controversial for a bit, and i imagine that's at least one of the reasons why too good riddance tbh - invariably the type of people that are annoying to interact with anyway 😝
If you want to headcanon that Jax is transmasc, that's perfectly fine, but if you want to Death of the Author it and say that reading is just as valid? No one can stop you, but what you're doing is dismissing the repressor aspect of Jax's character. Just know that you're choosing to ignore that.
Kathryn Salamander 🔜 TFN 202648And if the MAIN reason you're going with that reading of the character is because you feel uncomfortable with the fact that we don't have a better name or pronouns to refer to Jax with? Maybe reflect on that discomfort. That icky feeling is what Goose was trying to impart. It's arguably the POINT.
Alexis Raine14I'm gonna be brutally honest and say that at this point reading Jax as transmasc feels to me like trying with all your might to squeeze a square peg into a round hole
Sean7I'm a cis guy, so I might be missing something in my perspective, but I genuinely don't see how someone could watch that last episode and not read Jax as transfemme.
Eleanor4It is apparently "DotA can be sort of transmysoginistic" day here on my feed, which is wild because the other example is actually just Roland Barthes. Anyhow, giving this series a watch.
1-800-HE'S-𓆏3Reading Jax as trans masc when Ribbit and Pomni and even Zooble are just Right there what the ever loving fuck? Like any 3 of those characters have SO MANY MORE implications of transmasculinity than Jax ever did.
This reminds me of the most humorous misuse of Death of the Author I personally have encountered: Someone applying it to Louisa May Alcott's very autobiographical LITTLE WOMEN
Movies Silently19They were being weird about Amy (I absolutely love to bring up Amy on social media because people reveal EVERYTHING about themselves in response to her) and I mentioned that she was based on Alcott's very real sister and they responded with "DEATH OF THE AUTHOR DEATH OF THE AUTHOR"
Tantz Aerine 🇨🇦🇬🇷4I finally read the Death of the Author essay and it just reads to me as a rant that someone didn't like what they read (and also falsely claim to understand how ancient Greek tragedy works, or that Greek is a dead language) and are trying to make it everyone's problem. Can't take it seriously XD
