Darren Lorente-Bull

The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author. Roland Barthes Roland Barthes' essay "The Death of the Author," published in 1967, is an iconic and  ground breaking text in literary critical theory in which Barthes argues that the key to understanding a text can be found in the reader. Barthes posits that the author's biography and intentions when writing are far less important than the multiple interpretations that the readers of the text will create. It is readers who matter in the creation of meaning in any given text and not the creator authoring the text.  Barthes states this unequivocally in his essay " the author is not the source of meaning; rather, the meaning is produced through the interaction between the text and the reader." This, of course, is a very postmodern notion: there are no absolute truths. Truth and meaning are relative, fluid and changeable. This affects not only the interpretation of an...

You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes. Maimonides Slowly but surely, the religious beliefs that we had been dragging with us in the West since the Middle Ages, were eroded with the advent of modernity and positivism. Postmodernity and its relativism put the final nails in the coffin. Suddenly, the paradigm of absolute religious truth was replaced by the acceptance of multiple religious and spiritual truths that were truths when considered in their particular contexts. Even the Roman Catholic Church had to admit that "portions of truth exist outside the Church". Clinging to an absolute religious truth is simply untenable in a globalised world. Science relies on absolute truths: a virus is a virus in every country and language regardless of any other cultural considerations. But perceived metaphysical certainties are far more complex and impossible to pin down and universalise. When it comes to religious beliefs, these are almost by definition mutu...