A Writer Should be Invisible – Agree/Disagree

I have never agreed with Barthes' principle of ‘killing the author’, most predominantly because I find the concept ‘killing’ anybody, even if it is only metaphorically, to be somewhat crass. After all, to kill the author you are not only disregarding their life, but also denying them the chance to dictate the meaning of their own text.
Of course, Barthes' theory wasn’t about denying the author so much as enabling freedom in creative and critical interpretation. However, I feel that knowing the intention of the author can in no way impede how a text is reviewed critically. And I feel this because a text is an extension of its writer; the author lives in any work they produce. Emily Dickinson herself, who strongly disagreed with the idea of publication, felt that many of her poems were so much a part of her that they had no place in being priced, critiqued or shared with anyone outside of her immediate circles.
By stating that the author has no right to the text, you are cutting away the heart of the text itself, and replacing it with a heart of your own imagining. In this sense, you are becoming a metaphorical author, a phantom filling an empty space and taking ownership. At which point Barthes dictates you, as the author, are no longer relevant. Meaning that no theories are relevant, because by becoming a part of the text you are no longer welcome to it.

In conclusion, I feel that if you have the imagination and ability to fill the empty spot of an author, who has been forced out their own work, then perhaps rather than a hostile take-over, you should be focusing your energies on writing your own work instead.