Bang bang my baby shot the author down

"We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single "theological" meaning (the "message" of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture."

This is taken from "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes.
The first interesting point I noticed in this quote is "none of them original". That line, I guess, shot the author dead. It's difficult to comprehend no text being original. An author is not having a brilliant and unique idea and then writing it down for our understanding. Whatever a person decides to write about already exists.

The blending and clashing is also significant in regards to the "innumerable centres of culture". I take this to mean that ideas existing in our culture are what make it into a text. So many of these ideas are combined together to form a text. Different elements come together to form something. But everything pre-exists the text.

In the introduction of the Foucault reading, the term "author function" is discussed. It's a notion we seem to hold on to just so we can make sense of stuff in our minds. It seems like without the author, we would have difficulty classifying things. I don't know anything about Shakespeare, but I can list a whole bunch of stuff that he wrote.

After a bit of digging, I found a post by I cite on Making Readers
The initial question is what makes certain bloggers find her post? The post deals with her subject matter drawing in a certain audience. Can the author create a particular audience?
The author is posting subject matter that interests her. An audience with similar interests is drawn in through tagging and searching. There are some topics that she can't write about because the discussion through blogs has already begun.

"I can assume, in other words, that the readers are mirrors of a particular fantasy I have of myself."

But does this really have to do with the author of the blog? I think Foucault would said no. The blogging topics are the "innumerable centres of culture" happening all around us. Blogs are the way of blending and clashing whatever topics are popular right now.

Authorship is something Spencer and I have tried to discuss a few times. I think we attempted to post something earlier regarding the topic? I'm crossing my fingers that he will want to discuss this more.