Hm. I was just processing my emotional reaction to this statue, and didn't intend it to be reflective of any current events. However I strongly believe The Author Is Dead, and if this interpretation works for the audience then I'm happy for that fact.
"The Death of the Author" says not that the author's opinion doesn't matter, but that there are no authors. It says that authorship is impossible, because originality is impossible. It's "The Intentional Fallacy" which people are always thinking of when they say "Death of the Author"; and that essay doesn't say that the author's opinion isn't helpful when trying to understand a work, but only that you shouldn't credit a work as having expressed an idea simply because the author meant it to express that idea. It only counts if the words in the text do in fact express that idea.
I think "The Death of the Author" is important not for its naively simple medieval metaphysics, but because it exposes contemporary literary criticism as a fraud. Well-known literary critics regularly cite it as having said things it doesn't say, which proves they never read it--and it's arguably the single most-famous, most-cited essay in literary theory today. Not only don't critics today read much literature; they don't read the literary theory essays that they cite. Or, if they do, they read them without understanding, not letting the words penetrate, but simply imposing upon them the standard interpretations they're given in "the discourse".
Ah, but I'm a descriptivist, so if that's what people always think of when they say Death of the Author, then that's what it means. :) I actually didn't know it was an essay, I thought it was just a term that was named via some sort of pre-internet TVTropes process. I do enjoy the context though, thank you for sharing it!
Heh, and here I thought you were cleverly playing on the fact that Goliath was a Philistine, arguably making him a Palestinian. The Philistines arrived in Palestine at about the same time as the Hebrews. The Hebrew Bible says, "A group called the Avvim used to live in villages as far south as Gaza, but the Philistines killed them and settled on their land" (Deuteronomy 2:23), and, "the land around Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron belongs to the five Philistine rulers" (Joshua 13:3)
I think this is the most-balanced and least-conclusive commentary on the Israel-Palestine conflict that I've seen.
Hm. I was just processing my emotional reaction to this statue, and didn't intend it to be reflective of any current events. However I strongly believe The Author Is Dead, and if this interpretation works for the audience then I'm happy for that fact.
Oh, I forgot my obligatory rant:
"The Death of the Author" says not that the author's opinion doesn't matter, but that there are no authors. It says that authorship is impossible, because originality is impossible. It's "The Intentional Fallacy" which people are always thinking of when they say "Death of the Author"; and that essay doesn't say that the author's opinion isn't helpful when trying to understand a work, but only that you shouldn't credit a work as having expressed an idea simply because the author meant it to express that idea. It only counts if the words in the text do in fact express that idea.
I think "The Death of the Author" is important not for its naively simple medieval metaphysics, but because it exposes contemporary literary criticism as a fraud. Well-known literary critics regularly cite it as having said things it doesn't say, which proves they never read it--and it's arguably the single most-famous, most-cited essay in literary theory today. Not only don't critics today read much literature; they don't read the literary theory essays that they cite. Or, if they do, they read them without understanding, not letting the words penetrate, but simply imposing upon them the standard interpretations they're given in "the discourse".
Ah, but I'm a descriptivist, so if that's what people always think of when they say Death of the Author, then that's what it means. :) I actually didn't know it was an essay, I thought it was just a term that was named via some sort of pre-internet TVTropes process. I do enjoy the context though, thank you for sharing it!
Heh, and here I thought you were cleverly playing on the fact that Goliath was a Philistine, arguably making him a Palestinian. The Philistines arrived in Palestine at about the same time as the Hebrews. The Hebrew Bible says, "A group called the Avvim used to live in villages as far south as Gaza, but the Philistines killed them and settled on their land" (Deuteronomy 2:23), and, "the land around Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron belongs to the five Philistine rulers" (Joshua 13:3)