Westphal has the wit to ask Derrida, Foucault, and Barthes which author died, and he gives this answer: “According to familiar versions of theism, God is Creator, and the world has all and only those features that God (intended to) put there; if there is a certain indeterminacy due to creaturely freedom, that is only because God (intended to) put creaturely freedom in the world.”
The author who died is the text’s “Creator,” and like the Creator of theism, the text “has all and only those meanings that the author (intended to) put there.” The author that died is “a very particular kind of author,” and in fact an author that “never existed in the first place”: “Real authors do not create meaning in the way God created the world. They are neither the Alpha (pure, unconditioned origin) of meaning nor the Omega (ultimate goal) of interpretation.”
He wisely reminds us that “the death of the absolute author is not the absolute death of the author.”
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