Journaling Project No. 2 - the Death of the Author

 "We shall never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing." (Barthes 142). 

How I interpret this is that written language is not detailed enough to relay emotions people go through. I see this explanation going into three different directions. One - even though the author can write out their feelings in a way that makes sense to them, others reading it won't every truly feel the emotions that the author went through. It can be read lazily (such as reading it too fast or reading it in a monotone voice), or there can be genuine misinterpretation on the writing. Even if the feeling was caught on by the reader, they might say it/imagine in it in a different dialect/way of saying it. There's so many ways to say one sentence that there is no way everyone will interpret something as the author intended. Two - maybe the author just doesn't have the words to convey their emotions. They might just not have the vocabulary to show the emotions. Three - there are better forms of communication that express voice and point of origin such as music and art. You know what they say: a picture says a thousand words. 

"Linguistically, the author is never more than the instance writing, just as / is nothing other than the instance saying /: language knows a 'subject', not a 'person', and this subject, empty outside of the very enunciation which defines it, suffices to make language 'hold together', suffices, that is to say, to exhaust it." (Barthes 145).

This is completely random, but this reminds me of ChatGPT. ChatGPT is supposed to take words in and assume the next word based on probability, which then turns into sentences, paragraphs, and more. It doesn't actually take in meanings in what people prompt it to. While the outcomes do result in similar actions as search engines, they use any works found online as their own answers rather than redirecting users to websites that have potential answers; it's why ChatGPT tends to get things wrong frequently and/or give different answers to the same prompts. It seems like Barthes would like ChatGPT given their lack of attachment to words.

Updates on Final Project

I changed my final project. I am now moving on to creating my own playlists on CDs. I feel like physical media is a lost art form, and it's very nostalgic as I've seen it done from time-to-time in my childhood. However, I was super young when this was popular, so I never got to do it on my own. Now, I'm old enough to try it myself. I want to go bigger on this, though, and have an actual CD set up. This means having the CDs burned, having individual cases for them, and creating covers for the cases. I have already gotten the playlist created and put onto the CD, got access to empty cases, and began drawing out the covers. Although it is a little later in the term to make this change, I feel like this can get done in a timely manner. Each CD will be a different genre.