Description
Book SynopsisThrough close readings of Barthes, Derrida, Sedgwick, and Spivak, Jane Gallop connects the theoretical death of the author to the writers literal death, as well as other authorial deaths, such as obsolescence.
Trade Review“. . . Gallop has provided us with a profound look at what it means to read and write in the face of human mortality. Highly recommended for students of literature and literary theory.” - Emily Manuel,
Global Comment“Jane Gallop is no doubt one of the best readers of her generation, but with
The Deaths of the Author she proves that her writing is unprecedented: sharp, brisk, with a great sense of rhythm, utterly sophisticated and yet perfectly clear, from the very first till the very last sentence.” - Jan Baeten,
Leonardo“Jane Gallop revitalises debates on the ‘death of the author’ theory by examining the effect the theory has on the author of a landmark work. She uses readings of influential literary theorists Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to connect an author’s theoretical, literal and metaphoric deaths to discuss the idea.” -
Times Higher Education“Gallop meticulously yet gracefully analyzes the complicated relationship between a devoted reader and the author that inspires them. . . . Gallop’s impressive close reading breathes new life into these dead authors and fittingly pays tribute to the man who killed the author and liberated the reader by practicing what he preached at a level of insight and clarity on par with Barthes himself.” - Chase Dimock,
Lambda Literary Review“Gallop’s close readings in and around queer lives, the “fragments” that the “dead-but-still-going” author leaves behind, elegantly invite us into the traces, ghostings and shadows that viscerally render the imbrication between the theoretical and the personal — a dynamic often disregarded in many academic circles. By writing Barthes (then Derrida, then Sedgwick, then Owens, then Lynch, and then Spivak), [she] breathes life into the future-perfect corpses that are never really dead as such in the first place.
The Deaths of the Author conjures a
corps de ballet in which Gallop cinematically choreographs shadows and bodies so that in their performance they commingle. I am thankful for the invitation to dance.” - David A. Gerstner,
Reviews in Cultural Theory“Always lively and lucid, Jane Gallop has produced another remarkable book. Taken literally, the familiar notion of ‘the death of the author’ acquires a wholly different resonance in these essays on major contemporary theorists, who reflect on the temporality of writing and the effects of deaths of authors.”—
Jonathan Culler, Cornell University
“Jane Gallop is one of the small handful of critics who are keeping close reading alive. With this volume, she illuminates the stakes in paying such careful and loving attention to the words by which writers are turned, and turn themselves, into authors: stakes made visible on the relational field joining reader and author in an intimate bond that’s desirous, companionate, aggressive, indecent, sustaining, disturbing, unstable, and, when elaborated by a critic and thinker as gifted and incisive as Jane Gallop, also endlessly productive.”—
Lee Edelman, author of
No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive“Gallop has provided us with a profound look at what it means to read and write in the face of human mortality. Highly recommended for students of literature and literary theory.” -- Emily Manuel * Global Comment *
“Gallop meticulously yet gracefully analyzes the complicated relationship between a devoted reader and the author that inspires them. . . . Gallop’s impressive close reading breathes new life into these dead authors and fittingly pays tribute to the man who killed the author and liberated the reader by practicing what he preached at a level of insight and clarity on par with Barthes himself.” -- Chase Dimock * Lambda Literary Review *
“Gallop’s close readings in and around queer lives, the 'fragments' that the 'dead-but-still-going' author leaves behind, elegantly invite us into the traces, ghostings and shadows that viscerally render the imbrication between the theoretical and the personal — a dynamic often disregarded in many academic circles. By writing Barthes (then Derrida, then Sedgwick, then Owens, then Lynch, and then Spivak), [she] breathes life into the future-perfect corpses that are never really dead as such in the first place.
The Deaths of the Author conjures a
corps de ballet in which Gallop cinematically choreographs shadows and bodies so that in their performance they commingle. I am thankful for the invitation to dance.” -- David A. Gerstner * Reviews in Cultural Theory *
“Jane Gallop is no doubt one of the best readers of her generation, but with
The Deaths of the Author she proves that her writing is unprecedented: sharp, brisk, with a great sense of rhythm, utterly sophisticated and yet perfectly clear, from the very first till the very last sentence.” -- Jan Baeten * Leonardo Reviews *
“Jane Gallop revitalises debates on the ‘death of the author’ theory by examining the effect the theory has on the author of a landmark work. She uses readings of influential literary theorists Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to connect an author’s theoretical, literal and metaphoric deaths to discuss the idea.” * Times Higher Education *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Part I. The Friendly Return of the Author 27
1. The Author Is Dead but I Desire the Author 29
2. The Ethics of Indecency 55
Part II. If I Were a Writer and Dead 85
3. The Queer Temporality of Writing 87
4. The Persistent and Vanishing Present 115
Notes 145
Works Cited 163
Index 167
