The Author as Reader

One of the most radical conceptual shifts in postmodern debates about art has been the dismantlement of the very idea of a work of art, its unity and ontological status. The move from work to text has entailed far-reaching questions concerning the status and function of the artist or author, the role of interpretive communities, and the constitution of texts as intertexts. By concentrating on the author as reader, the present volume explores the process of writing in terms of textual visions and revisions undertaken by the author him- or herself. Tracing an author's foot- or fingerprints along the multiple versions of a text does not only alert us to the fact that a printed text may not be the first version, nor may it be the final, let alone finished, version; more radically, it suggests that works of art are fleeting products within a fluid process of transformations.