Author(s): Sandeep S S, R Dharani

Abstract: 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 AI-mediated 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

Article Info: Received: 12 Mar 2026; Received in revised form: 08 Apr 2026; Accepted: 12 Apr 2026; Available online: 15 Apr 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.112.72