The Paradox of the Author's Death: The Author's Postmortem Existence

Abstract

Since the 1960s of the author's death has entered the everyday life of humanitarian thought as a key philosophical metaphor justifying the methodological principles of postmodern textual criticism. Death in this metaphor denotes the redundancy of the author as a source of textual meaning-making.  This article suggests a different way of understanding the author's death – through biographical and existential contexts. In this case, death is viewed in the perspective of its denial. The purpose of the article is to establish the conceptual foundations of the author's death paradox. The study has revealed four sides of the paradox: the interpretative-proleptic significance of the fact of the author's physical death; the postbiographical mobility of recognition; the posthumous author's existence in the Other; "For eternity" as the existential dominant of creative self-reflection. The four facets of the paradox of the author's death indicate the fundamental incompleteness (the "eternally" unfolding processuality) of the author's presence.