The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida Sean Burke For the late twentieth century, the death of the author assumed a significance analogous to the death of God one hundred years previously. In this now classic study, Sean Burke provides the first detailed explanation of anti-authorialism and shows how, even taken on its own terms, the attempt to abolish the author is philosophically untenable. Rather than developing a traditionally humanist defense, Burke effectively out-theorises theory through rigorous readings that demonstrate the concept of the author remained profoundly active even and especially as its disappearance was being articulated. The question of the author, he argues, is not a question within theory but the question of theory. Building on a substantially revised second edition, Burke further explores the challenges faced by an authorial theory that has "still to come." Prompted by the response to passing of Jacques Derrida in 2004, he revisits the enigmatic borderlines between life and work, life and (authorial) death. Sean Burke worked in the Department of English Studies at the University of Durham for thirteen years. His academic publications include Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern: A Reader and The Ethics of Writing: Authorship and Legacy in Plato and Nietzsche. His first novel, Deadwater has been published in France as Au bout des docks (2007). He is currently researching a study of discursive ethics in Plato, Levinas, and Derrida.