The other day, in a restaurant, I saw a news item appear on the TV screen with the headline “DEATH OF AN AUTHOR,” and I thought to myself, “How interesting! CNN is doing some kind of piece on Foucault, or perhaps Barthes!”
Of course this was not true. CNN was doing a piece on Micheal Crichton, who is an author who is dead for real, not theoretically.
I agree.
I would like to contrast that experience with one of my recent “clearly I’m in grad school moments”. So, I am sitting in my “Deleuze in the Context of Poststructuralism” and were talking about his theory of becoming and one of the examples brought up is becoming-vampire. The prof. is like “so, I guess to become a vampire you get bitten” to which I shout out “no!” and then proceed to explain how to become a vampire according to the mythology of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was truly a shining moment in what I’m sure will be a mediocre academic career.