Language

Language is a funny thing with regard to an author. It writes the author more than the author writes it. It has more power over the reader than the author. The reader perceives language more than he perceives the author resulting in the death of the author.

 Or so Barthes argue.

 

 Language is ìa structure, as we increasingly suspect; but the author is the only man, by definition, to lose his own structure and that of the world in the structure of languageî

 

But ìBy identifying himself with language, the author loses all claim to truthî

 

Yet in learning ìhow to write, the author ultimately discovers the open question par excellence: why the world? What is the meaning of things?î

 

ìThe authorís language, intransitive by choice and by labor, inaugurates an ambiguity, even if it appears to be peremptory, that it offers itself, paradoxically, as a monumental silence to be deciphered, that it can have no other motto but Jacques Rigautís profound remark: and even when I affirm, I am still questioning.î

 

If the author cannot control his own language, who can?

If the author is trapped, needless to say, the reader.

Is there any hope of the emancipation of the reader?