Reimagining The Death of the Author: AI and Literary Authorship

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence or AI today produces literary-like texts and these texts have raised a debate on the well-established speculations about creativity, originality and authorship in literary studies. The algorithmic system has been challenging the conventional idea of the author being a conscious and creative human agent by generating poems, critical prose and stories. This paper discusses Roland Barthes’ seminal concept of “The Death of the Author” taking in consideration the present-day AI- generated writing and positions it within the posthuman theoretical frameworks. This study argues that AI has not only repeated Barthes’ proclamation but also revolutionised it by separating the literary text from the lived experiences and human origin. This study based on the post humanist and poststructuralist thought explores the thought of an author being transformed from an individual subject to a process in the modern age where the AI algorithms rule over authorship distributed over algorithms, readers, programmers and datasets. This paper further aims to understand the contemporary relevance of literary studies and the cultural, ethical as well as the pedagogical connotations of posthuman authorship in the digital age.