1.

Why Barthes begins his essay referring to Balzac's short story

“Sarrasine”??
“The Death of the Author” is an essay written in 1967 by French literary critic and philosopher Roland
Barthes. In the first paragraph, Barthes tries to explain the fundamental idea that he lays forward in his
essay through the character of Zambinella taken from Sarrasine, a novella written by Balzac.In his story,
this character who is actually a castrato disguised as a woman,Balzac writes, “It was Woman, with her
sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive fears, her unprovoked bravado, her daring and her
delicious delicacy of feeling.” By quoting these lines what Barthes wants to suggest is that we can not
claim that the above lines are spoken by the author himself. Actually,Barthes poses a question of
whether it is ever possible to know whose ideas are coming forth in these expressions. Is these the
character of that novella speaking? is it the man Balzac speaking with his preconceived knowledge and
prejudice of women or is it someone else? Basically, what Barthes makes us realise as a reader is that
one can never find for certain through what a particular character is talking if it is the personal opinion
of the author coming through the mouth of that character or someone else. According to Barthes, the
intentions of the author are irrelevant. The work isn’t an exact replica of his intentions and in the
process of giving words to the thoughts, writer intentionally or unintentionally is involved in a process of
meaning-making on which he has not complete control as the author/ writer isn’t a God.

2. Why did Barthes present Mallarme in his essay The Death of the Author?

Roland Barthes's famous essay "The Death of the Author" (1967) is a meditation on the rules of author
and reader as mediated by the text. Barthes's essential argument is that the author has no sovereignty
over his own words. When we encounter a literary text, says Barthes, we need not ask ourselves what
the author intended in his words but what the words themselves actually say. Barthes says that Writing
is the destruction of own voice or erasing of the ' self'. As the writing begins, the author starts entering
in to his own death. It is not the author who speaks in the text but it is the language that does so.
Linguistically, author is nothing; hence it is language that functions. As soon as the writer starts writing,
he is dead because when he writes he has no control over the text but it depends on the interpretation
of readers. Author uses language to put it in infinite meanings. He allows the readers to interpret the
text. As a result, the reader produces multiple meanings. So, every text is repetition of repetition.
According to him, The birth of reader must be required by the death of author. In conclusion, no writer
is original: every text is photocopy. To present this idea Barthes mentions some theorists like Mallarme
who want to destroy the author's identity. Mallarme's suggestion is that we should focus on the text
instead of the author. According to him , it is the language which speaks in a text and not the author.
Language is more important in a text than the author who writes it. To sum up, a writer is nothing
because he borrows everything from his cultural dictionary.

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 3. Why a “race of angels” have been crippled and deformed? Briefly explain.
In the essay “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Stuart Hall focuses on Post-colonial and diasporic identity
and describes a surge in Third Cinema of the Caribbeans. Those arriving from war-torn countries are
forced into a tug-of-war between being Accepted and accepting themselves as inherently divided. Upon
entrance to their new Nation, they immediately become the ‘Other’ while being simultaneously
stamped as ‘resettled’ so as not to be an inconvenience moving forward. The oppressor makes the
Oppressed self-aware of their status as Other and as inferior. Those affected by the diaspora have at
times attempted to return to their pre-colonial Mother culture. This return has failed because they live
as hybrids oscillating as if in an Unstable, semi-permeable membrane between their new and old worlds.
They Constantly morph and therefore participate inconsistently in both their past and present Places.
This hybrid predicament is what Frantz Fanon expresses as “individuals Without an anchor, without
horizon, colourless, stateless, rootless – a race of angels.”

4. Brief explanation of the phrase "hidden histories".

5. Who is the Time magazine’s of the year in 1989 and why he is elected?
Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment. The
fundamental premise of the Ecocriticism is that human culture is connected to the physical world,
affecting it and affected by it. An interconnection between nature and culture is the subject of
Ecocriticism. As Mikhail Gorbachev became the Communist Party’s General Secretary and the de facto
leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, he became aware of much that we would learn for sure only later.
He saw the way in which the unbridled growth of the defence industry during the cold war had polluted
the country. In recognition of his outstanding services as a great reformer and world political leader who
contributed greatly to the changing nature of world development, Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize on 15 October 1990.Gorbachev was the single most important initiator of a series of
events in late 1989 and 1990 that transformed the political fabric of Europe and marked the beginning
of the end of the Cold War. That is why he is elected the Time magazine’s of the person for the second
time in 1989.

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