Beyond the Death of the Author: Posthuman Authorship and AI in Death of an Author

The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence has significantly transformed contemporary
literary production, challenging traditional notions of creativity, authorship, and textual authority. This
paper examines the emergence of posthuman authorship through an analysis of Death of an Author, an
experimental novella created by Aiden Marchine. The novella is a combination of human imagination and
AI-generated text. By situating the work within posthumanist discourse, the study explores how AImediated
writing disrupts the conventional model of the individual human author and introduces a hybrid
form of literary creation in which agency is distributed between human and machine. The title of the
novella directly invokes the influential theoretical framework proposed by Roland Barthes, whose concept
of the “death of the author” questioned the authority of the author as the ultimate source of textual
meaning. In the context of AI-generated literature, this metaphorical death gains a new dimension as
algorithmic systems actively participate in the generation of narrative content. Drawing on posthumanist
theories developed by scholars such as Rosi Braidotti and N Katherine Hayles, the paper argues
that Death of an Author exemplifies a shift toward distributed creativity and collaborative authorship
between humans and intelligent machines. Through a critical examination of the text’s production process
and narrative structure, the study highlights how AI-assisted writing challenges long-standing assumptions
about originality, intentionality, and literary agency.
Keywords— Artificial Intelligence, Authorship, Death of the Author, Identity, Posthumanism