7/26/2019 The Genie of the Author

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The Genie of the Author: Re-appropriation of Authorship in Soobramanien’s Genie and 

 Paul .

The figure of the author has been the cause of much debate as to her/his role within works s/he

 produces. The text is generally seen as existing beyond the confines of authorial creativity and

intention and the arena of interpretation is, as a result, left solely to the particularity (or 

 peculiarity) of the reader. Clinically divorced from the piece of art s/he brings forth and in spite

of the death sentence prescribed to her/his existence, the author is nonetheless very much

 present. f !arthes proceeds to kill the author in order to restore to the text a semblance of, in

what can only be a terrible wordplay, "un#authorised$ ob%ectivity of interpretation and intention,

then !urke (&'') demonstrates that the latter is in fact omnipresent her/his death only heralds

her/his imminent return or rebirth more insistently. *hile the notion of authorship is contested on

the above fronts, a perceptible shift from the authored "work$ to "Text$ is noticed in relation to the

re#appropriation, re#writing or re#working of already existing pieces of literature. +rawing from

!arthes$ eponymous essay -rom *ork to Text, it can be argued that already#categoried

*orks (defined as a fragment of substance, occupying a part of the space of books (in a

library for example)) are re#metamorphosed into sites of re#negotiations and re#authoring as

Texts (defined on the other hand as a methodological field) once the author has properly

 been disposed of.