Beyond the Death of the Author: Textual Authority, Oral Traditions, and the Ethics of Reading

Abstract

This paper re-examines Roland Barthes’ seminal essay The Death of the Author (1967) by situating it within the historically specific conditions of Western, text-centric literary culture. While Barthes’ argument is often celebrated for liberating the text from authorial intention, it emerges from a tradition shaped by Romantic individualism, print capitalism, and the institutionalisation of the author as a figure of authority. By placing Barthes in dialogue with oral and indigenous narrative traditions—where authorship is collective, fluid, or culturally embedded—this study argues that Barthes’ thesis is not a universal theoretical rupture but a contextual methodological critique. The paper further contends that an uncritical application of Barthesian anti-authorialism risks erasing marginalised voices for whom authorship functions as political presence and cultural self-representation. Re-reading Barthes through these alternative narrative epistemologies enables a more ethically attentive model of interpretation, one that balances textual plurality with cultural accountability.