The Death of the Addressee. A Political Reconsideration of the Concept of Author

Abstract

In this paper, I will retake the concept of author from the reflections and the perspective of thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt or Claude Lefort. I do not intend to defend here the thesis of «the death of author» or the assumptions of the «reception theory». Instead, I want to problematize the notion of sovereignty in itself and to rethink the concept of authorship from the point of view of authority. To this purpose, I will reread the concept of author from a perspective that, at least partially and potentially, was present in its pre-modern sense, I will tackle the intricate relationship that both author and its work have with tradition and heritage, and finally I will examine the active and productive role that readers can have.