Rewriting the death of the author: Rancierian reflections

For decades now, critics of the" death" of the "author" thesis have worked themselves up about a paradox that supposedly undermines Barthes's and Foucault's treatment of the theme: these French theorists cannot banish the authorial voice from their own writing. Taking a lead from Jacques Ranciere, this article tells a different story of the death of the author, one that makes better sense of this supposed case of double standards and that uses Nietzsche's ideas on authorship to show that Barthes and Foucault are doing something much more powerful and interesting than simply contradicting themselves. (c) 2015 The Johns Hopkins University Press.