OUGD501 Study Task 1 , Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes The death of the author.

What is my understanding of Roland Barthes excerpt?

Barthes talks about a number of touching subjects relevant to
the current affairs of 1967, at this period revolution was on the
horizon. Barthes writes "Who is speaking thus? Is it the hero of
the story bent on remaining ignorant of the castrato hidden
beneath the woman? Is it Balzac the individual, furnished by his
personal experience with a philosophy of Woman? Is it Balzac the
author professing 'literary' ideas on femininity? Is it universal wisdom?
Romantic psychology? We shall never know, for the good reason
that writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin."
In my opinion Barthes is trying to express that as the reader we are
not using our voice in a sense a hierarchy is applied and we the
readers are not close to the top of the chain, not only are we exposed
to ranking we are left trying to create a meaning to something that
we cannot, as we are not the author how could we possibly understand
the authors approach and knowledge at the point of writing this leaves
to suggest their is typically no central meaning to any piece of writing
as different people will create different meanings.

Bathes also writes "The author is a modern figure, a product of our
society " By this I believe that Barthes is again touching on a class
and hierachy system by saying that "The author.. a product of our
society" suggests that we as the reader chooses success and wether
the author deserves our companionship, by choosing who is successful
and unsuccessful we are as the reader becoming subjective rather
than merely objective determining the career of another person, we
are also therefore influenced by the authors egotistical knowledge
and views if we decide someone is therefore the genius we will
absorb anything be it lies or truth that they feed to us these in turn
could become factual when in reality myth.

An example of Barthes theories of hierarchy in Graphic Design would
be Massimo Vignelli, Vignelli at first glance is a very renowned graphic
designer and is thoroughly appreciated by students and designers, when
taking a second glance into Vignelli it is clear that Barthes principal of
genius is applied an example of this is Vignelli's rules, Vignelli's has a set
of rules of which he believes is the only way to design and by not
complying with his rules you are therefore an unworthy designer this can
be seen as egotistical as who is he to say what something that should be
objective is subjective,Vignelli is a biproduct of social and political heirachy
which in effect is created by us.