I need people to learn what death of the author actually is. It isn’t “jkr who? Harry Potter was written by Daniel Radcliffe” or whatever the fuck. It means “I don’t care what jkr says she intended or not, the Harry Potter books are riddled with misogyny and ableism and racism.” It means “I don’t give a fuck that Andy Weir claims to not put politics in his books, Project Hail Mary has a shit ton of political statements in it. Stratt being a woman is a political/social statement. Which countries are involved with the petrova task force is political. The fact they get funding is political.”
Death of the author just means that you’re focusing on the reader’s interpretation of the work, not the author’s intention. It can also ignore the author’s history/beliefs, yes, and you can absolutely critique that, but that is why it is a literary theory and just ONE way to interact with literature, not the end-all-be-all of literary criticism
