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Writing After the Death of the Author Authorship’s Wake: Writing After the Death of the Author by Philip Christopher Gore Sayers A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Philip Christopher Gore Sayers, 2018 Authorship’s Wake: Writing After the Death of the Author Philip Christopher Gore Sayers Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto 2018 Abstract Fifty years ago, Roland Barthes declared the death of the author, setting the terms for a continuing critical conversation about authorship. “Authorship’s Wake” unsettles the centrality of Barthes’s essay in the debate by introducing a new set of participants: the authors themselves. Focusing on the generation of contemporary writers who were trained in theory’s critique of the author—Maggie Nelson, Zadie Smith, Chris Kraus, Sheila Heti, Ben Lerner, David Foster Wallace—and on the later work of theorists like Barthes and Judith Butler who participated in that critique, “Authorship’s Wake” argues that, even half a century after Barthes’s field-defining essay, the author is a more essential figure than ever in contemporary literary culture. Specifically, I make the case that authorship is at the centre of how writers today are grappling with a range of concrete questions—ethical, aesthetic, political, economic—that far exceed the scope of Barthes’s original intervention. Each of the four chapters focuses on one particular issue at stake in the debate: communication, intention, agency, and labour. The chapters are arranged by scale, from smallest to largest. The first, at the familial level, argues that ii Nelson’s non-fiction work The Argonauts provides a post-Barthes model for thinking about writing as a form of communication between two people. Against the background of debates about free speech in the university, the second chapter contends that campus narratives by Smith (in On Beauty) and Butler (in Precarious Life) demonstrate both the importance and the limitations of the critique of authorial intention. The final two chapters are more explicitly political: chapter 3 is an analysis of the author as a figure of patriarchal power in contemporary autofiction and in Barthes’s late seminars. And, at the largest scale, chapter 4 (drawing on archival research at the Harry Ransom Center) reads Wallace’s The Pale King as a theory of authorial labour in neoliberal America. “Authorship’s Wake” ultimately makes the case that the best way to understand what it means to be an author today is to read across lines of genre: theory, literature, and texts that defy categorization altogether. iii Acknowledgments This dissertation concludes with an attempt to think about intellectual activity not in terms of sole authorship but via the idea of the study group, a term I’m borrowing primarily from Fred Moten and Stefano Harney. This dissertation is the result of many hours of solitary reading and writing (and amongst many things I owe Mari Ruti—mentorship, friendship, intellectual inspiration, travel plans, a great deal of time and funding—is the reminder that that’s important too). But it also owes its existence to many intersecting study groups: formal and informal gatherings of different scales, formed of connections of many textures and with many types of co-students—from those I’ve only encountered in books, to those I’ve shared a classroom with, to the closest of personal ties. My thanks to the following study groups: An incredible dissertation committee, smarter and more supportive than I could have hoped: my supervisor Mari Ruti, Michael Cobb, and Andrew DuBois. A writing (and friendship) group worth holding on to: Joel Faber, Margeaux Feldman, Katherine Shwetz, and Adie Todd. Reading groups across the University of Toronto (at the Department of English, the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, the Centre for Comparative Literature, and the Department of Classics), especially the Contemporary Literature Reading Group: thanks in particular to Henry Ivry, Thom Dancer, Rijuta Mehta, and Avery Slater. Classes that I’ve learned from, as instructor (gratitude to the students of Wild Theory in Summer 2017), as TA (every incarnation of Literature for Our Time: massive thanks to Denise Cruz, Nick Mount, and Miriam Novick), and as student. iv The University of Toronto’s English Department, which is too large for me to be able to name everyone in the department to whom I owe gratitude—friends, colleagues, mentors, administrative staff. Tremendous gratitude to everyone who has made it materially possible to be a graduate student in the humanities. For me, this has meant funding from the Ontario Trillium Scholarship, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, the University of Toronto Fellowship, the Doctoral Completion Award, and more, as well as from RA work for Mari Ruti, Denise Cruz, Sara Salih, Kevin O’Neill, and Siobhan O’Flynn. Massey College, for the home, conversation, and fellowship for three years and more. Co-workers in Unit 1 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees branch 3902. Solidarity to everyone who participated in the 2015 Unit 1 strike. The School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University’s 2016 session, especially the participants in Renata Salecl’s seminar. My thanks to the University of Toronto’s Department of English for sponsoring my place at SCT. Everyone who made possible the time I spent with the Harry Ransom Center’s David Foster Wallace archives in December 2016. A Harry Ransom Center Dissertation Fellowship, supported by the Creekmore and Adele Fath Charitable Foundation and the University of Texas at Austin Office of Graduate Studies, provided funding for my research, as did the University of Toronto’s Centre for the Study of the United States (special thanks to Alexandra Rahr) and School of Graduate Studies. The conferences where I’ve presented early versions of many of the ideas that appear here, including the American Comparative Literature Association (thanks in particular to the participants in the 2018 panel on autotheory), LACK, OzWallace 2017, and the 2017 UWM v Center for 21st Century Studies Conference. I am grateful for the various bodies that have helped fund travel to these conferences, including the Department of English, the School of Graduate Studies, the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, and Massey College. The thinkers, teachers, and writers whose words and ideas have formed my particular manner of thinking, whether they know it or not: Abdurraqib, Ahmed, Barthes, Batuman, Bukhari, Butler, Chariandy, Cole, Heti, Hudson, Kraus, Lacan, Lerner, Moten, Nelson, Ngai, Ruti, Sharpe, Smith, Solnit, Wallace, Wark. Globe-spanning friendships with Paul Coulter, Mélissa Gelinas, Amanda Hsieh, Diana Leca, Ted Parker, and the Fitzwilliam/Ginsberg diaspora. Globe-spanning family—above all, my parents. The best partner in study and life: Tajja Isen. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents .................................................................................................................... vii Introduction “Words Streaming in Your Wake” .......................................................................1 Sole Authors ..........................................................................................................................1 Writing After .......................................................................................................................15 Communication, Intention, Agency, Labour ......................................................................27 Chapter 1 Communication: Maggie Nelson and the Literary Text as Letter ...........................33 Introduction .........................................................................................................................33 Letters ..................................................................................................................................36 2.1 The Literary Text as Letter ..........................................................................................36 2.2 Epistolarity and The Argonauts ...................................................................................40 2.3 The Risks of Letter Writing .........................................................................................45 2.4 Silence ..........................................................................................................................50 Wittgenstein, Barthes, Irigaray: Communication, Nonsense, and Space ............................54 3.1 Whereof One Cannot Speak .........................................................................................56 3.2 Acknowledged Nonsense .............................................................................................64 3.3 Space ............................................................................................................................67 3.4 The Work of the Reader ...............................................................................................73 The Argonauts and the Ethics of Space ..............................................................................75 4.1 Fragments .....................................................................................................................78 4.2 Allusions and Family Making ......................................................................................81
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