What is an author?

In 1968, Roland Barthes declared the death of the Author and the birth of the Reader. This volume has brought together an international group of authors to respond to the persistent and politically-charged question, 'What is an author?'. The structuralist onslaught on agency has thrown into question the humanistic certainties of biography and literary authority. Intellectual developments in psychoanalysis and literary theory have meanwhile signalled the collapse of the unified subject and the need to challenge authority by stressing the slipperiness of language and meaning. Studies of the role of the reader have multiplied.

Yet the author has not gone away. The cult of the author, perhaps especially the cult of the poststructuralist authors themselves, persists. Recent thinking on race, gender and sexuality has rearticulated the need to position authors who write from a 'different' perspective within specific historical frameworks. The challenge of dealing with authorship in the postmodern world is both serious and urgent.