“[W]riting is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing”. With this one sentence in the opening paragraph of his short essay, “The Death of the Author”, Barthes shocked the literary world. In this essay, Barthes claimed that when writing is practiced not with the view of acting directly on reality, but as an act within itself, then “the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins”.

In five short pages, Barthes raises a question that has preoccupied critics ever since: Does the author exist, and if so, what is his/her role?