The Rebirth of the Author

"Roland Barthes’s famous prediction about the death of the author has come to pass, but not because the author is nowhere, but rather because she is everywhere. Indeed, the author has grown and multiplied in direct proportion to academic dismissals and denunciations of her presence; the more roundly and confidently the author has been dismissed as a myth, a construction, an act of bad faith, the more strongly she has emerged. The recent surge in personal websites and blogs — rather than diluting the author concept — has helped to create a tyrannical authorship presence, where the elevation of the personal and private to the public level has only compounded the cult of the author. We are all authors today. We are all ~auteurs~. We are all writers. We are all filmmakers. And we are all theorists, because what we make theorizes itself." From The Rebirth of the Author by Nicholas Rombes, C-THEORY, VOL 28, NO 3, 06/10/2005; Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker.