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Getting to Know the Death of the Author

Conference Paper · May 2012

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Daniel Coombes
Victoria University of Wellington - Te Herenga Waka
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 Getting to Know The Death of the Author

Coombes, D. (2012). Getting to Know the Death of the Author. Proceedings of the Archhist: Architecture, History, Art. Istanbul,
Turkey. pp. 173-179. ISBN: 978-605-4514-04-5
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The literary critic Roland Barthes in 1968 proposed the concept of the death of the author as a way of understanding
how language operates in context of the postmodern. Barthes (1987, p.143) claimed that 'it is language which speaks,
not the author' in order to suggest that the intended meaning and interpretation of a text is not determined by the author
and is ultimately indeterminate. Barthes' concept has proved influential, being appropriated in many disciplines, beyond
the realm of literature, including the visual arts, music, architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism.

This paper will trace the death of the author by citing key works from a number of disciplines. Attention will be given to
how the death of the author has been affected through its interaction within and between different disciplines. A particular
focus is given to its complicated reception in architecture. On one hand it has been negatively interpreted by purportedly
process minded theoreticians as either an aesthetic (Leach, 2009, p.34) or formal (Prominski and Koutroufinis, 2009, p.
159) approach to architecture. On the other hand the death of the author has been positively identified as a precursor to
the current preoccupation with notions of process such as complexity, indeterminacy and emergence in architecture,
urbanism and landscape architecture (Waldheim, 2007, p.15). This paper concurs with this second reading of the death
of the author throughout proposing that it offers a timely and critical context through which to understand the current
focus in landscape architecture and urbanism with notions of process. To speculate on the future of the death of the
author attention will then be paid to its more recent appearance in landscape architecture and urbanism. A positive, yet
critical, view of this interaction will be advanced.

Although the death of the author should be, and is, open to multiple interpretations and manifestations in practice and
theory this paper will argue that we still ought to bring to these concepts a rigorous and critical stance that attempts to be
empathic to Barthes' open, yet precise, position on the death of the author.

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