This is for those who know what “death of the author” means or who is willing to look it up, but in short, it can summed up to mean “whatever a work of fiction means is up to the people to decide on”.
Question inspired by an incident the other day where I saw someone one day cite “death of the author” when asked why he went into the womens’ bathroom, saying “you keep saying the symbol on the door is a stick figure in a dress, but I look at it and see a stick figure in a cape, and so I entered because I’m super.”
It doesn’t matter what he sees. We as society have constructed that meaning. He knows it and is just an asshole. If he wants to change that meaning, he has to convince others to adopt that meaning and not just do what he wants.
This has nothing to do with the death of the author or post modernism, but people who get all twisted about have been saying this for sixty years now. Here’s a thirty year old example of missing the point.