Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

post what?! (not) an abbreviated introduction 21
believed it was out there to be found. Thus, a constant feature of life during
the Modern era was a debate among the various interpreters of any given
idea as to whose version was superior, according to its accordance with
truth.
Cultural theorists reject this modernist exercise. They argue that there
is no true Orient, only the collective renderings of its interpreters. Because
everything had to pass through the lens of interpretation, all the British had
were their interpretations; there was no Orient a priori. Instead of quarreling
about whose version is more correct, cultural theorists ask how particular
versions come to be.
Another Challenge to Modernity:
Roland Barthes and Dead Authors
By arguing that discourses governed the perceptions of nineteenth-century
British authors, Orientalism draws upon a foundational argument in cultural
theory, the notion of the “death of the author,” which was fi rst published
in an essay in 1968 by Roland Barthes (1915–1980). 21 Barthes asked
a simple question: What happens to authors if discourses govern how they
view the world? Who actually writes when an author puts pen to paper? Is it
the author or the discourse? Barthes said it was discourse. In his world, the
author, metaphorically, had died. Born in her or his stead was the reader—
all of us who, by virtue of our participation in the collective exercise of discursive
construction, are involved in the authorial process, no matter how
tangential to it our role might be.
Barthes’ ideas clash directly with modernity’s notion of authorship. According
to modernists, a text refl ects the intentions of its author. Literary
critics were like detectives, scholarly versions of Sherlock Holmes, who
used their rational skills to seek out the truth in the form of the author’s
intentions, thereby gaining insight into the process of creative genius. Who,
a modernist might ask, selects the words and writes them down? Who constructs
the sentences, thinks of the overall story, and pulls together random
ideas to create a coherent narrative? It could be no one else but the author,
of course.
Cultural theorists reject this notion by asking what directs an author to
make her or his selections. Can authors be omniscient, knowing every connotation,
every possible motivation behind and implication of their selected
thoughts, words, and ideas? To a cultural theorist such complete awareness
is impossible, and they see the modernist notion of authorship, and the
entire body of modernist literary interpretation, as resting precisely upon