The Author Cannot Die: Contradictions in ‘The Death of the Author’ (Final Part) Manujendra Kundu By way of explanation: This is the practical part of the previous one. In this part the readers can find some of the very well known facts, but my objective, though it might seem otherwise, is not to reiterate/repeat the old discussion on academic ostracism per se. Here, I wanted to discuss the author-making processes in the academic preserve. In fact, academia is perhaps the most prolific sanctuary/machinery for hatching out the author species. Therefore, what I wanted to show here is the academic process of the making of an authorial structure; and that the very idea of an author-less and authority-less system is not only unfeasible academically, but also a utopian idea. One can keep on discussing an author-less reading practice endlessly, but that is not going to help us anyway, even if we forgo the logical weaknesses in Barthes’s article. As I have mentioned in the first part, I am completely in agreement with his idea of ‘disentanglement’ as mentioned in this essay, and my critique of this article has got nothing to do with my appreciation of his other ideas expressed in other articles. Who is generally known to be an Author? Institutionally (traditionally and commercially), novelist, dramatist, poet, essayist, theorist, historian, sociologist, anthropologist and so on and so forth; historically, the author exists by various means. But why does s/he have to die? In order to create a space for multiple layers of meaning/ textuality/ discourse. Where does this space exist? In rarefied, academic industry. Before advancing further let me be very clear from the beginning of this section that this part of the article is concerned with the class of ‘authors’ related to the disciplines mentioned above, and not with the group of academic, non-academic scholars/ teachers devoted to the scientific (physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, physiology, geology, economics, medicine, etc.), legal, defence research/pedagogic practices, though critics may categorize economics, law, etc. as separate branches of social science (and mathematics as humanities). It must also be clarified that unpublished writings are not of any interests to this article because their reach is congenitally restricted (to none or to a few, and because of their commercial non-viability. Moreover, as one reads on, one would understand why unpublished writings could not be taken into consideration here). However, before understanding the author, let us get acquainted with the reader who, according to Barthes, is supposed to prepare the dead body of the author for the obsequies. Without identifying the class-character of the reader, the author cannot be recognized or buried. A reader can exist at non-academic and academic level. If we consider the former, the whole discussion is almost useless—the reasons would be mentioned towards the end. Here, we would engage ourselves with academic reading practices only. But first, let us look at the processes of the birth of the reader. The Reader: A Labour-producer—some known, yet unacknowledged facts According to the nature of service (to be) rendered, a reader is simultaneously a labour and a producer in the academic industry. One undertakes all the pain of academia from childhood to be disciplined, and then reproduces by dint of the harvest. (In the course of learning and reproducing, one has to undergo the exercises of accumulating all sorts of societal norms which are nothing but prototypes of a strict hierarchical structure—sometimes seen, sometimes unseen—steered/governed primarily by pecuniary transactions/relations. The gender bias is not free from these types of relations; it germinates primarily from the question of controlling the production means. The protracted regular domestic violence and discrimination, exploitation at the workplace, salary-discrimination even in progressive countries, racism—all arise primarily from the question: who/which gender controls the production, and who/which gender has been the possessor of the production means. The general (impersonal) psychological hierarchy penetrates the particular (personal) trajectories leading to discriminations at several strata. In pre-capitalist system, as we all know, men by virtue of savagery and brutality (pillage and ravage) secured the position of breadwinner, thereby that of the producer and controller of the production means (the word ‘production’ should, of course, be construed differently). Quite naturally, gender bias, domestic/sexual violence, etc. are not new to capitalism. It is the visible, touchable, storable, multipliable money that has replaced muscularity to a considerable extent. In many instances, inequalities are now translated as discrimination, and NOT ‘sin’, illegal, crime in the strictest sense. Money has made offences absorbable, acceptable, palatable, though with grievances. In a civilized world that is euphemistically called system.) The survival of the (aspiring) reader is contingent on the precondition of a competitive structure because of limited resources and numerous applicants, whereas, on regular basis, one is fed with the concept of maintaining academic standards (whereas it is never clearly discussed that the politics of ‘standard’ is directly related to the demands of the market for ‘quality’ produce in order to secure the ‘surplus’). By the time a prospective reader enters the hallowed precincts of higher education, one is almost already halfway through the cutthroat processes of exclusion (/inclusion). Thence, as one goes up each rung of the ladder, one realizes the nature of corporatism and/or feudalism of the education industry that solely revolves around the hierarchical power structure among its emissaries or agents (teacher/professor/supervisor/adviser/dean/bursar/principal/vice chancellor et al. In some cases, the agents are also evaluated by their clients/customers, that is, the student body, but that can be neutered, in cases of negativity, as long as the agent maintains a good rapport with the establishment/institution. The pre-conditions of political interference are not to be overlooked in some/many cases. And, considering all existential aspects, there is no reason to not believe the student-teacher relationship as that of a seller and buyer; maybe a more humane one). The various aspects may vary on a case-by-case basis depending on the character of the institution as well. In a clutter of inexorably festering re-production system, a reader is born amidst a state of inimical, muddled flux; as one proceeds, one learns the dynamics of authorship/authority, and, at the same time, is taught to bury the author through an amusingly contradictory academic system, which may be called reader-ness. For the limited financial support and to advertise academic excellence, academic institutions survive on cutthroat competitions while recruiting a teaching staff, which, again, is based on some rituals. But there are reasons to believe that these competitions are absolutely free and fair and played on a level playing ground (nothing on earth is unbiased—this is the classified datum which no one would ever admit). These competitions are actually the cockpits for showing off academic muscle-power. Interestingly, no conditions of these competitions are hidden. This is the most fascinating part of such asphyxiating contests, which are manipulated by some formidable unwritten rules: (besides curricular performances) extra-curricular activities, the (world) ranking/status of the applicant’s institution, influence/authority/supremacy of the applicant’s referees, applicant’s place of origin (depending on the stage of academic level), even the applicant’s gender, race, caste, etc. In some countries, and in some special appointments, direct political influence is also exerted, though they always remain unrecorded. After the selection, the reader (who is either called the researcher or the teacher) is not salvaged, rather embroiled in constant rituals and rites for their survival. The risk of losing job or becoming inconsequential always looms large. Hence, in order to survive, the reader, besides maintaining her/his reading (and other academic) practices, is also supposed to keep producing quality materials as much as possible to prove the authority on the subject/topic (quality in many cases is betrothed to quantity in the CV). By doing so, the reader not only makes her/himself known to the world but also increases the level of her/his saleability, which can be euphemistically called ‘acceptability’. The politics of ‘networking’ is another way of making oneself saleable, acceptable, and employable. The Author-product—further known facts: ‘The Death of the Author’—a romantic, saleable product Let us see now the making of the author. It must also be remembered that not every reader turns out to be an author in a strictly academic sense/environment. The one who wants to keep oneself suspended in academic acrobatics is supposed to reproduce oneself through his/her products (writings) besides managing other things. However, in the beginning, once done with the ceremonial review process, as part of the sacrosanct, inviolable ritual, a writer goes into a legal contract with the publisher, where all sorts of transactional obligations/duties are enumerated in the interests of a peaceful settlement between the intellectual producer (the writer) and the mercantile producer (the publisher). But, as the readers know, it must be noted that commercially, the producer of an academic piece is generally known as ‘Author’, and the seller-producer (who may or may not look after the editorial matters) is the ‘Publisher’. The technical meaning of the writer in the publishing industry bears different connotation: literally, one who writes clerically (a copier, ghostwriter, etc.). After the publication, the product comes straight to the market for consumption (to be sold, read, analyzed by peer-reviewed journals, newspapers, and academic institutions—all of which run on government grants and/or financial assistance from private institutions). Commercially and legally, the writer no longer remains just an intellectual producer; by birth (right), s/he is an Author-product, Author-merchandise. Barthes was/is no different. In academia, on the one hand the number of publications establishes supremacy over others, on the other, even a single piece of production, by virtue of re-production (further writings/discussions/lectures, etc. on the basis of it), is transformed into an act/expression of authority (this is true for any act of production at any level without discrimination). The very fact that a piece of writing by someone attracts others’ attention and demands further study and analysis endows that someone and his/her product (writing) with a special status: it is not just any other writing; it is The Writing—expressed in a certain manner, with certain thoughts, may or may not be based on previous ideas by others, but which demands (an extra) attention—which makes a writer, besides its legal-commercial aspects, in institutionalized, intellectual-behavioural pattern (‘s/he wrote’), an author. The carrier or the linguistics, which is considered to be the more concrete feature by some commentators like Barthes, is not the most important part, but the abstract elements, i.e., the ideas, which are expressed/composed, produced for the purpose of consumption and reproduction For this reason, not only writers, but painters, sculptors, actors, musicians, dancers or any other performers, directors (of any artistic forms), producers, music players, composers, architects et al. also qualify to be authors. Almost every type of expresser has its own way/language of expression/composition. by someone with the help of a language, are (even a badly written piece can be illuminating). There is certainly a sense of profit/gain that one (the writer: the author as well as the reader) can make out of the product by various means, which, legally and commercially, confers the title of author on the writer and the academic industry is no different (it may be argued unremittingly). The author-product is both reproduced and multiplied everywhere and at every level. It is a different question how many people are benefitted by those products or whether they are undertaken for anybody’s benefit at all except for seeking academic advantages. Once a part of an institution, the academic producer is appropriated by it and eventually by the state. In both, a piece of work is construed as intellectual property, authorial achievement/accomplishment, without which one cannot prosper in professional career, and thus in personal life. A book or an article is a sign of one’s academic prowess, which not only exudes one’s authority on the subject but also displays one’s ability to spread the fame of the institution one is attached to. Similarly, the (profiteering) institution also creates a space for the individual to prosper so that the individual can transform into an institution as well. It’s a mutual process; some are able to cash in, some retire just like any other ‘ordinary’ teacher. The more influential (by virtue of establishing authorial command as a disseminator) the entrepreneur is, the better academic one is considered to be. The rest is just average. His/her authority is not limited then to academic sanctuaries only; s/he can be attached to policymaking bodies of public (and/or private) institutions, of course depending on the degree of personal relationship between him/her and the institutional authorities. In cases of public institutions, political affiliation/credentials/homogeneity is/are as important as one’s academic qualifications; sometimes more important than anything else. Once selected for such posts, s/he can influence government activities to a certain degree as an adviser. Otherwise, s/he can be rewarded/awarded, honoured by public and/or private institutions. There also political belief and affiliation are scrutinized thoroughly. Whether their words would catch government attention is completely a chance factor. In spite of Chomsky’s repeated warnings, criticisms, and advices, the White House could not be dissuaded from warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. The common people of the USA had to meet the cost later on, let alone the suffering countries. The President of the USA and the Prime Minister of England are happily and blissfully retired now. The West is vocal in matters related to human rights but remains blind to flagrant violation of equal pay rights against female and other workers in spite of amassing heaps of papers on human rights, women’s rights, etc. Not only that, how fantastically, in the name of rights and freedom of work/choice, the West has made (the body of) men and women, especially (that of) the latter, the objects of spectacle (therefore, consumption) to be commercially produced and reproduced interminably! At times, I wonder how women were exploited earlier within the confines of home, and, in the name of liberty, they are now exploited freely, publicly, and collectively in the open, without consternation, trace of illegality and offence. Prostitution would be hated simultaneously with a growing demand for this to be designated as a work/job/profession in the progressive countries. These instances of contradictions are indispensible for a profiteering world to thrive on. There is no wonder in it. The contradictions are the fundamental conditions/rules of the mercantile system, always at work in complete legitimacy. The exploitation continues in one shape or the other, in one country or the other progressive countries. I wrote the first draft (of both parts) more than a year ago. Readers can and must remember the #MeToo campaign, which is in circulation in academic world as well, in this regard when they are reading it now. I may sound rude and unsympathetic, but in a patriarchal, capitalist structure these are quite normal and natural; there is no wonder in it! Additionally, the influential scholar can contribute to the profiteering publishing industry by being ‘pioneering’ producers/authors. Likewise, academic institutions ensure the existence of the publishing industry, which is translated as the dissemination/propagation of knowledge, and therefore the establishment of one’s power of knowledge. If we look at the formation of the writer (one who thinks and writes) and writing, it is closely associated and has transformed with the changing physiognomy of capitalism, which is/was certainly not unknown to the learned academics like Barthes (at least, that is the impression that we get from his other writings), yet they would shy away deliberately from admitting them in the open, and keep sermonizing the idea of the demise of the author, which, again, is nothing but a propitious, saleable product of modern academia both in the classrooms and at the publishing level. By virtue of the introduction of such a ‘novel’ idea, several other saleable streams opened up, and the possibility of others was created as well. Eventually, the free market expropriated everything. Interestingly, on the one hand the denial of the Author, therefore the non-existence of a meaning is taught, on the other, the academic structure and the non-academic world are governed solely on the basis of the authorial, economic structure, whereas etiquette, modesty, hospitality, multiplicity, etc. are part and parcel of the superstructure—the democratic process (social consciousness). It is like saying: academics for academics’ sake; academic meaning for academic meaning’s sake. In fact, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary describes ‘academic’, in one of its explanations, as “not connected to a real or practical situation and therefore not important”. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/academic_1#academic_1__11; accessed on 23 January 2018. Lame Literature, Sorry Social Science: Collusion with System Whether one likes it or not, for all these reasons, neither literature nor social science, with their utmost probing and illuminating/enlightening qualities, can change/influence the political and mercantile discourse. The authorial proclivity/productivity at the academic level cannot change itself either. Linguistically, ideologically, and content-wise, most of the literary products move around as innocuous, intangible, airy commodities which remain content by provoking little amount of uneasiness here, and some agitations there, manifesting their bargain tactics with the government/humanity/existing system (readers may remember Barthes’s own observations elsewhere). In many cases, while registering protest, they resort to allegories. Instead of being direct and actual, on the very first move, they become fictitious and/or poetic/mysterious, though some disciplines under social science seem more concrete and less intangible and establish a kind of dialogue with the social norms in order to make them more humane (though I have already excluded economics and law from this discussion, they are no different in this sense). Both literature and social science analyze, criticize and agitate, in their own ways, social systems so as to remove its anomalies and contradictions, but never really express the fundamental idea that those are the primary conditions for the survival of a profiteering democracy. Instead, these characteristics are projected as decadence, vice, sin, unlawfulness, etc. There is therefore always a distant hope of purging the soul of the system, which might seem to have gone astray, but, by the invocation of conscience, can be brought back to the line of justice/benevolence/altruism/magnanimity. Similarly, there is an exchange of opportunities: literature and social science give/suggest an opportunity in the service of humanity/humanism, which the social structure may pay heed to in order to make its operations more subtle, democratic and artistic. Its area and nature of operation spread to uncharted territories in unimaginable, unprecedented ways of controlling measures. Literature and social science actually help capitalism become artistically severe/cutthroat (thus capitalist democracy becomes more mature and subtle), and in turn literature and social science lose their positions in the vast world of pecuniary relations. The more mature a capitalist democracy becomes, the more ingenious it turns out to be in its exclusive measures: it will not impose censorship on intellectual products very easily and so often, and refrain from political attacks on and murders of intellectuals as the sign of judiciousness. Instead of being impatient at and intolerant of criticisms of various nature—literature and other academic products are no different from other voices of disagreement; they do not have any special status as intellectual merchandises—and unlike the totalitarian system, the ‘compassionate’ capitalist democracy allows dissension to prosper to a considerable degree by apparently disregarding the proceedings because, at the initial levels, indifference is one of the best non-violent ways of silencing/excluding the undesirable voice(s). Any incidents of assault on litterateurs or their products are simply manifestations of crude and unskilled management of the ruling class, which also prove that it has not learnt the art of exclusion. Apart from achieving other objectives, literature can elevate/kindle its heart and social science can develop its faculty of social reasoning to metamorphose it into an increasingly tactful, diplomatic, artistic system always lying in ambush, though legally, openly. Hence, there is no wonder that even after producing voluminous socio-historic-literary documents and polemical submissions, no academic, esoteric theories like psychoanalysis, realism, existentialism, surrealism, structuralism, post-structuralism, modernism, post-modernism, or artistic super-products like Mother Courage and Her Children, Murder in the Cathedral, War and Peace, Death of a Salesman, Waiting for Godot, Gītānjali, etc. could stop state warfare/bloodshed/skirmishes: the US invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine unrest, India-Pakistan tension, Syria crisis, Chinese occupation of Tibet, human trafficking, prostitution, sexual exploitation or the rapacious business strategies by the industrial bigwigs across the world, which are against the interests of the common people. There is certainly no wonder that Malala Yousafzai would be hailed and Edward Snowden, Julian Assange would be hounded out. In order to maintain this system, systematically and strategically, we are taught to remain faithful to these types of academic products and their ceremonial appreciations. While we believe and celebrate these products, the state continues with its measures that have different titles: policing, defence, espionage, etc. Being far from the hardcore reality, literature and social science primarily roam over sophisticated (academic) ideas and imaginary worlds depending either on human emotions or the past and/or present events, which were/are controlled by those institutions that politically and economically help thrive academia. Given their impracticality and uselessness in a far more aggressive and fleecing capitalist structure, it is not surprising therefore to come across any news of dwindling support to the humanities by the funding bodies, or those of the threat of abolishment of the stream in the universities by some governments. They are their own enemies. It must be admitted alongside that these kinds of products definitely register a very limited amount of influence together with other democratic (protest movements) and un-democratic (sabotage of every kind) forces. It is up to the policymakers to accept or reject the dissenting voices. Sometimes, in order to show a good gesture and to prove its generosity, a welfare government might accept the demands; sometimes the demands are overlooked/suspended for decades; sometimes the unwilling government yields to the pressure, mostly when the pressure no longer remains apolitical (here, by apolitical I suggest without the active participation of politicians/political institutions) and is not limited to civil movements/aspirations. Literary and cultural products are also very useful to establish diplomatic relationships, spread cultural supremacy/uniqueness. These products—always appear to be sweet, feel-good, refreshing, rejuvenating, delectable, scintillating, humane, and hopeful—are made to garnish the political platter. One cannot forget how language and literature were thought to be useful instruments during and after the colonial period in India, first by the British invaders, then by the American agencies. If, therefore, we start believing in the counteractive potency of such intellectual outputs, we would simply deceive ourselves. Palliative Prescription Far from all these, scientific and legal researches/teachings are relatively well supported because of their practical (political, societal, economic) utility, but the author remains alive for similar reasons. These products help to strengthen the authorial base beyond the academic tranquillity. But most of the non-academic readers are not bothered about the esoteric, ritualistic academic thoughts and linguistic manoeuvres, because they are subjected to regular authoritative discourse of a harsher life, where the idea of the author’s death is nothing but the skein of inventions, ostentation of erudition, and wielding of the wand of cognizance. As we all know, most of them read literary products for mere enjoyment without caring much about academic ideas. In all good faith, I believe that the champions of such harebrained ideas were aware of almost all of whatever is said above. Readers may come across some of the ideas expressed here in Barthes’s other writings too, though in a different degree and garb. Do we have reasons then to believe that he had the same to ignore these factors and ramble about? Without taking these details (surely, there are many more like these) into consideration, if palliative recommendations like ‘The Death of the Author’ are catered to outwitting the readers, that is not only deceiving, but also disappointing and utopian, and its arguments turn out to be sheer display of intellectual prowess without any practical use, only to be stored in the library shelves, read, and re-read in the soporific classrooms feeling excited about the baseless multiplicity of thoughts/voices. In the market of voices, utterances might be numerous, but only those stand, survive, circulate, and seem propitious which follow the game of author-ity. The rest only come and go with rare possibility of catching the attention of an authored society. Depending on the degree of attention/appreciation, the proportion of the survival of other voice(s) is decided. 16