What is an Author? Philosophy, History, Theory | Dr. Sheheryar Khan

The history of literary criticism from the earliest times may in fact be said to be organized around conceptions of authorship. As Sean Burke has commented that ‘there is no theory of literature or the text which does not imply a certain stance’ towards the author. The question ‘what is an author?’ does not have an uncomplicated answer as it also involves a certain stance towards the text and its interpretation. it is also about the distance between ‘nobody’ and ‘the author’; between naming and anonymity; between the presence and absence or life and death of the author. This talk traces the philosophical and theoretical evolution of this question.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Sheheryar Khan has been serving as an Assistant Professor of English in HED, Punjab for 18 years. His doctoral research project was a reading of Milan Kundera’s fiction using Slavoj Zizek’s Parallax view. His main interest are literary and cultural theory, philosophy and psychoanalysis.