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Changing Subjects

Both Roland Barthes, in “Death of the Author,” and Jacques Derrida, in “Structure, Sign,

and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” make explicit statements concerning

“subjects” (i.e., individuals) that would be anathema to those who believe that certain writers are

geniuses. It is this artefact, this particular subject--the Author (or engineer)--along with its

prestige, that Barthes and Derrida are most interested in disassembling. However, Derrida, by

drawing attention to the leadership and exceptional nature of both Claude Lévi-Strauss and

Friedrich Nietzsche, and by characterizing deconstruction as a critical approach to language

which not only provides more choices to the writer, but which enables choice, implicitly suggests

that he still believes in the writer as empowered. It is likely that Derrida would prefer that “his”

text communicate to readers that humanists have vastly both overestimated and overemphasized

the control and creativity of single individuals. But given that many of his readers live in

cultures which celebrate and believe in geniuses, Derrida may have to be as careful as Barthes is

when discussing innovation to avoid unintentionally reinforcing readers’ prejudices.

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism states that structuralism “shares in the

widespread and ongoing modern antihumanism that decenters the individual, portraying the self

as a construct and a consequence of impersonal systems. Individuals [according to stucturalist

critics] neither originate nor control the conventions of their social existence, mental life, or

mother tongue” (20). And because individuals are better understood as acted upon than as wilful

initiators, structuralists prefer the term “subject,” which connotes obedience and subjugation, to

“person,” which connotes an active will (20). Both Barthes, a stucturalist, and Derrida, a

deconstructionist, use the word “subject” rather than “person” in their texts, and both critics

agree that individuals have limited control over language.

Though both Barthes and Derrida believe that everyone is a subject, because they both
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share an interest in abolishing the importance of the Author/engineer, they attend, in particular, to

the writing-subject (i.e., the writer). Though Barthes is arguing that the reader requires more, not

less, attention than the writer normally receives, Barthes hopes to make this argument by first

demonstrating how inappropriate the humanist reverence for the Author is/was. Barthes is

disgusted by the “pathetic view of his predecessors” (1468) that “[an Author’s] person, his life,

his tastes, his passions” (1466) deserve close attention. Barthes claims that this conception of the

writer as genius is now known to be misleading--it was “killed” by the discoveries of linguistics

(1467). His replacement for the concept of an autonomous Author--the scriptor--eliminates,

because none of his/her ideas are original, because he/she can only “imitate . . . gestures” (1468),

and because he/she, as much as the text, is a “space in which a variety of [influences] . . . blend

and clash” (1468), the “prestige of the individual” (1466).

Derrida, too, derides the idea of an engineer “who could supposedly be the absolute

origin of his own discourse and would supposedly construct it ‘out of nothing’” (965). In fact,

arguably, given isolated examples from his text, Derrida qualifies a more limited role for the

writer than Barthes does. Barthes is dramatically circumscribing the traditional role of the writer

so that “his power is [only] to mix writings” (1468). But Barthes’ scriptor, though nearly

powerless, still arranges--that is, he still has some influence on when a thought begins or ends.

Derrida’s writer is described as merely “follow[ing] . . . ‘traces’ wherever it leads” (970). He/she

becomes almost the completely passive agent by “surrender[ing]” (970) himself to the agency of

signifiers. Derrida describes this activity as an “adventure” (970), but, at times, this adventure is

characterized so that it seems that it is the signifiers that adventure, with the writer merely

providing transport.

However, if a writer’s powers are vastly limited compared to the humanist conception of

them, then no single individual warrants the attention formerly lavished upon them. Indeed, too
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much attention to any particular writer risks conveying the impression that it is exactly the

writer’s “person, his life, his tastes, his passions” (1466), and maybe even his genius which are

worth noting. The subject as genius is the fundamental conception of an individual to be avoided

by those who favour analyzing a text’s complexity over a writer’s consciousness, because a

genius originates; he/she is construed as the source of his/her text. Yet both Barthes and

Derrida, who explicitly deny that writers are originators, both acknowledge that there have been

very important innovations in critical thought which have lead to a more sophisticated

understanding of language. There is nothing intrinsically problematic about their

acknowledgement of contributions. But since innovation has for so long been associated with

the efforts of geniuses, both Barthes and Derrida can count on having their qualified appreciation

being misunderstood by readers. Barthes, however, more so than Derrida, carefully deals with

innovation in his text so as to minimize its association with great individuals.

Barthes not only tells us that it is “the text itself [which] plays” (1472), that it is language

which “‘performs,’ and not . . . [‘him’]” (1467), he convinces us that individuals are less

important that we might heretofore imagined. Important developments in the history of thought,

such as the more sophisticated understanding of the writer as an integrated subject, are

acknowledged by Barthes, but he credits them to the work of a collective--linguists, for

example--rather than to the efforts of one man. He refers to the discoveries of “recent research”

(1469), which conveys a sense that research naturally gives rise to discoveries. In this instance,

he also refers to the efforts of a specific researcher, but within parenthesis (“(J.-P. Vernant)”

[1469]), so that its inclusion in the text seems optional. Barthes understands that if he wants to

persuade his readers that “voice [should] lose . . . its origin” (1466), he is best served by referring

to groups or collectives, wherein the individual voice is lost, when assigning credit for important

discoveries.
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When Derrida describes important innovations he not only refers to the work of specific

individuals, but describes and dramatizes them so that their leadership and their decisions, right

or wrong, seem to be worth noting. Derrida describes Nietzsche as “show[ing] . . . us the way,”

and Lévi-Strauss as “[bringing] to light . . . freeplay” (970). They are either prophets, or very

prophet-like. They seem to be unusual and noteworthy men--or rather, flawed heroes. Derrida

comes very close to declaring Lévi-Strauss nostalgic (he actually says, “one no less perceives in

his work a sort of ethic presence, an ethic of nostalgia for origins” [970]). He also describes

Nietzsche as “seeking” (970). The ever-seeking, tragically flawed hero is a highly Romantic

(and humanist) conception of a man. Indeed, arguably, the only thing missing from this

characterization is the Romantic conception of the hero as a man of genius. The reader, however,

may “fill in the blank.” Both Lévi-Strauss and Nietzsche, then, in Derrida’s text, come close to

resembling the humanist idea of a person that stucturalists amongst others are trying to abolish.

An argument can be made that it is absurd to accuse Derrida of reinforcing humanist

assumptions that there are great individuals simply because he attends closely to the thought of

both Nietzsche and Lévi-Strauss. Both writers are attended to because their work undermines

humanist conventions. It is Neitzsche’s realization that we should “pass beyond man and

humanism” (970) that Derrida finds praise-worthy. Lévi-Strauss is described as showing the

way, but not towards some absolute final truth, but towards an understanding of the

indeterminate nature of language. If Lévi-Strauss is portrayed as a prophet, then, his message,

that there can be no final truth, is unlike anything prophesied before. Moreover, if Barthes’ text

is deemed especially well-suited for minimizing dramatically different, even opposite,

understandings by readers of a writer’s intended message, then it is only fair to note that Barthes

has no problem conceptualizing of an individual as a shaman so long as he is not also

characterized as a genius (1466). And neither Lévi-Strauss nor Nietzsche is credited by Derrida
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for originating anything, merely for discovering aspects of language that have always existed.

Yet in the passage where he accepts the conception of an individual as a shaman, Barthes

emphasizes that in “ordinary culture” “[t]he image of literature . . . is tyrannically centered on the

author” (1466). If Barthes is correct, then changing modern conceptions of the writer as genius

requires the extra-care that he takes to avoid appearing to centre arguments around the works of

any one writer. Derrida’s lengthy discussions of, in particular, Lévi-Strauss, which include

sizeable quotations from his works, risk the unintended effect of reinforcing a reader’s possible

pre-existing belief in “Great Men.”

Barthes avoids conveying this impression, perhaps, because he follows what he preaches:

that is, his text is influenced by a writer who focuses on readers as much as on writers. Whereas

Derrida may have us thinking of the writer as a man “whose individual consciousness and

choice” (Norton 20) are relevant, because “his” text suggests that these qualities may indeed be

relevant to him. Unlike Barthes, who shares with Derrida the conception of writing as a

performance, Derrida does not (and likely does not intend to) convince us that it is the language

which “‘performs,’ and not [the writer]” (1467). Though there are select statements in Derrida’s

text which can be quoted to help argue the contrary, the likely over-all impression a reader has

after reading the text is that Derrida is excited about deconstruction, not because it somehow

enables language, but because it makes the writer more conscious of the ways of language than

he had been previously.

Derrida probably intends to encourage both a broader awareness of how language and

culture contribute to and control individual choice, and how this discovery actually expands

individual choice. Derrida is sophisticated, and his argument for the co-existence of seemingly

paradoxical outcomes is intelligible. But readers might soon forget that Derrida, though

empowering choice, does not believe in the singularly empowered mind (the genius). The belief
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in genius, in the power of individual will and creativity, is so strong (in Western cultures at least)

that readers may have trouble reading this particular text of Derrida’s in a way that does not

reinforce their prejudices.

Neither Barthes nor Derrida believe that a writer is a person who, unassisted, is a source

of original ideas. But, by attending so closely to specific writers, as well as to their texts, Derrida

may strengthen rather than weaken pre-existing associations readers have of writers. If Derrida’s

delight in individual choice typifies the direction deconstruction takes, perhaps deconstruction

owes its ongoing popularity in part because it can be made to fit with humanist assumptions of

an empowered individual.

Works Cited

Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” The

Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Ed. Daniel Richter.

Boston: Bedford Books, 1989. 959-971.

Richter, David H., ed. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Boston:

Bedford Books, 1989.

Roland, Barthes. “The Death of the Author.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001. 1466-1470.