The death of the autor between Barthes, Derrida and Foucault

This close examination will reveal profound differences but also common characteristics between Derrida, Barthes and Foucault on the concept of the death of the author. All of these theorists want to free the semantic process from the authorities who are supposed to give it the final word, and they highlight the role of intertextuality. However, whereas in Barthes and Foucault' s accounts it arises from purely literary or discursive considerations, where death is an inescapable fact of the literariness of specific discursive occurrences, in Derrida s work it has broader implications, where it is identified with the process of differance, and where it becomes the death of each speaking subject.