The Author is Dead

We mean things with words. Words mean things. These two can come apart.

What I mean and what my words mean can be two different things. Sometimes I mean well, but choose my words poorly. Sometimes I have poor intent, but my words don't carry it through. For better or worse, our words and their meanings can be critiqued independently of what someone might know about how we meant them.

This is incredibly important in our time of deconstruction. If someone with a platform speaks in a manner which is harmful or which means something wrong, they are responsible for their words, not just what they intended to mean when they wrote or said them. It is their responsibility to understand language well enough to make their writing mean what they want to mean with their writing. If they fail, they admit failure and revise what they said, they can note that they did not understand how what they said might be taken, but what they have no ability to do in defense is to say, simply, "that is not what I meant!" If it is not what you meant, you should not have said it, and you must take responsibility for your writing, whether to retract it or support it.

Words mean things. This cannot be reduced to the conscious intentions of the speaker or writer at the time, for we have no access to them except through their words and often when we write we are happy to admit to saying more than we could intend. When I write, my pen, my notebook, the screen on which I type, enable me to say more than I could consciously intend. I do not have the working memory to consciously intend to mean all that I say.

How else could we edit our writing? If the meaning is already precisely what we intended when we (first?) wrote it, then editing it cannot make it mean what we mean better. It may complicate things, insofar as my conscious intent on one pass may be different from my conscious intent on a second pass. Is it supposed to be the sum of my conscious intentions?

So, words mean things, and we have every right to argue with what a text says not just what its author wanted it to say. If it is bad enough, the author must be suspect, too, of course, or else be counted a very poor writer. It is true that we learn what people mean through interpreting their words, and it is true that interpreting their words sometimes involves wondering what they were trying to get the words to mean, but all of this is simply to say that we are all working with the same--or similar--linguistic system which gives us similar opportunities for meaning things with words.

Words matter. Say what you mean. Accept critique of what you said, not just what you meant or wish you had said. Take responsibility for your failures of communication and do not blame the other person for failing to read your mind.