Ideology and Science in the Debate about the Non–Existence of the Author

This article tries to explore the meaning of the famous polemic of the Sixties in which Barthes and Foucault supported the “nonexistence of the author”, showing its ideological and non–scientific character and the link with an anti–humanistic project whose philosophical roots are found in Heidegger and the political ones in Marxism. It is further argued that semiotics, in light of its competence on narrative syntax, has the tools to show the scientific groundlessness and the pretentious character of the controversy.