Is the author dead?!

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The issue of (the death of the author) has been known since ancient times, when Plato pointed out that writing is like drawing. This is because the drawn images appear as if they were living creatures, but they remain silent if we ask them a question. This is also the case with written speech. You think he is almost speaking, as if thought is flowing through him, but if you question him with the intention of clarifying a matter, he is content with repeating the same thing. That is, the vitality of question and answer almost disappears in written form, but we find it in a direct form in oral speech.

Plato's hints at the issue of the author's absence were based on the fact that the writer cannot know where his text went after writing it? And who stopped? The writer cannot defend himself to the person reading his text, as he does not know him, and may not interact with him face to face. For this reason, the writer cannot deal with the interest or confusion that arises in the mind. For him, oral dialogue is a living dialogue with a soul, in contrast to the written text, which remains without interaction, and from here Plato says: “After something is written, it continues to move from right to left indifferently, and is led to those who do not understand, and to those who do not care about it alike.”

Plato was pointing out that “there is, in fact, no one who sows these gardens of writing except for the purpose of entertainment, or so that their owner may keep them for himself as a treasure trove of memories that he will benefit from when he reaches old age of forgetfulness,” as if he wanted to tell us in one way or another: that the written text is a dead text, and that the writer no longer exists, and from here Plato was inclined to the dialogical tone in most of his writings, imitating (Socrates) in his method, which was based on kinetics. And vitality, which is a method that may have prepared for the emergence of dialectical dialogue.

These references that Plato made in ancient times were taken up by Barthes in the modern era in his references to the issue of (the absence of the author), so he entered them as a narration, when he began to wonder about some of the heroes of the novels: “Who speaks in this way?” Is he the hero of the story? Or the author,” so the features of this critical issue were formed for him. The text becomes a text once it is written, and not because it was created by a specific author, and language is what gives it voice and meaning, and it is what speaks in the absence of the author.

Thus, in his perceptions, Barthes set out to separate works of literature from their authors and enter into the arena of intentionality. He reached the point of challenging the reader to determine who is speaking and what is he talking about? Here he focuses on the incompatibility of meaning with pronunciation, and the incompatibility of sound with event, which opened the doors for critics to enter the worlds of this issue. The French philosopher (Michel Foucault 1984) came and raised this issue in his article he wrote in 1969 (What is the author?), and sought to liberate the reader from the control of the author. The same was done by the French literary critic (Jacques Derrida 2004) in his article (The Death of Ronald Barthes).

However, the British literary theorist (Sean Burke) was fair to the author in his book (The Death and Return of the Author), in his criticism of (Roland Barthes), (Michel Foucault), and (Jacques Derrida), when he traced the roots of the idea of ​​(the death of the author), and showed that these people, with their attempts to exclude the author and make the text the center, ended up restoring interest to the author, even if they did not stipulate that. The most important question in the age of artificial intelligence remains: Will the author have his prestige restored? Or did the author die?!