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from nature, or from history, which came to take God's place"» But, of course, it can also
be read in a political context ofincreasing industrialisation, which is how Pease prefers to
read it:
The use of the genius provides a politically useful contrast to other forms of labor in
an industrial culture. In producing own work out of material in his own imagination
the genius performed 'cultural' as opposed to 'industrial' labor." '
This is an ideal ofnon-alienated labour, of the genius, by definition few, creating works
of art that can help overcome a general feeling of alienation from the creative processes
of the many. It is also an ideal ofcultural privilege, of(high) art separated and untouched
from everyday practices, rather than connected to or coming out of them, of exclusivity
and avant-garde and ofa separation between art and life.
The 'author as genius', with authority over his/her work and power to create original work,
can, however, not only be read as an opposition and a way of overcoming the sense of
alienation and alienated labour of the late rSth century industrialisation, but can also be
looked at (and has been by both Roland Barthes and Pierre Macherey) as an integral
element of "capitalist ideology, which has attached greatest importance to the figure of
the author"." In a capitalist system, art becomes commodified and consequently, Pierre
Macherey argues in his essay "Creation and Production", man is "excluded by nature
from originality and innovation'?" and becomes an alienated figure who, even as an artist,
produces within the constraints ofthe economic system rather than creates despite of it,
and the creative author becomes an impossibility and myth.
While the creative, original author, the genius, is not possible in an industrialised and
commercialised system, the concept also loses its viability as the publishing industry
22 Currie Genius ,.28. He sees this as a development from the alienation felt after the Reformation,
when the absence o certainty provided before by the "tradition, ritual and organisation" (p.zo) of the
church made man feel both weak. and insecure. Romanticism he sees as the "first great phase of secular
culture"(p.n). Romantic man had overcome the Reformation insecurity and instead of a yearning for God
felt a desire for a connection with nature and history.
23 Pease, "Author", P.267.
24 Barthes, "The Death of the Author", P.I43.
25 Pierre Macherey, "Creation and Production", in: A Theory ofLiterary Production, transl.by Geoffrey
Wall (London, Henley and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), pp.66-68 (p.66).
Chapter 4 - page 137