The Death of the Author vs. The Uncritical Reader

            I was very interested by the texts "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthe and "The Uncritical Reader" by Warner Michael. I heavily disagreed with the views pointed out in "The Death of the Author” but was glad to hear some more nuance concerning such as I studied it further. I think that ultimately my rejection of the attempt to put the "Author" to rest is the loss of objectivity. While there are things to be gained by not having an objectively 'correct' way to interpret a text, I feel constrained to accept an objective interpretation to things - I agree with the point made by Barthe that by refuting objective meaning, you refute the source of objective meaning. In other words, by refuting objective truth between readers, I do not have an author. By refuting objective reality between people, I do not have a God. While this comes at great gains to the reader, I do not feel that this merits rejecting the author - in the end, there are origins, and there are authors, and I don't feel I can rightly cast them out, though I do appreciate the great argument and system of thought given by Barthe.

            I found it fascinating to consider how Warner enters this conversation. To me, at least, the 'critical reader" of Warner is at odds with Barthe's definition of a 'reader' (although I do not think that this was necessarily Warner's intention). Part of this is because of how he describes the "uncritical reader", someone who is engrossed in a text or affected by it in one way or another, making the portrayed 'critical reader' a cold and unaffected observer of a text. In this way, Warner describes the process of liking or not liking a text a job outside the realm of critical reading. Of course, Warner's description of critical reading is much more nuanced than this, but it perfectly plays into Barthe's point - the birth of the author is the birth of the critic, and one cannot exist without the other. So, by applying different ways of uncritical reading, Warner opens a very interesting dimension of how a reader could exist (which could not exist in critical reading).