in under 500 characters…

Now that #ai is colonizing
#writing, my mind goes back
to studying theory in the ’90s:
when Barthes’ Death of the Author
replaced the living subject
behind the speech act
with decentralized discourse,
the pleasure of the text,
and a critique of presence.
“What does it matter who
is speaking?” asked Foucault.
The author-function pervades.
Now all that we have left
are sliding signifier-chains
and disembodied hermeneutics.
And to the question:
Knock knock, who’s there?
—Who wants to know?