Oh goody, it's time to talk about the "Death of the Author"
I'm of two minds on this, but ultimately I think that the concept of the "Death or the Author" is pretty rubbish. First, we need to separate it from a related but adjacent context: the idea of "intent vs. impact" (though we'll get back to that in a bit). People tend to quote Barthes et. al. in those arguments, but what Barthes is talking about isn't that. The "Death of the Author", as Barthes argues, is very specifically related to literary (though it can extrapolated to all creative endeavors) criticism that says we shouldn't take what the author's stated intent or biographical information into account when conducting criticism of the work itself; that we should focus on the "text" solely. That this argument didn't really start to pick up steam until women and artists of color were starting to gain prominence and credibility in artistic and literary circles is, I'm
sure, merely a coincidence. But I think the argument falls flat on its face, even if we do ironically ignore the context surrounding it. See, context matters; and there are some who argue that the sum total of an author's writings, personal statements, and biography are all inextricably part of the
text as well. Literature is a definitionally messy way to convey a point; if it were completely and entirely straightforward it would be an essay. It does not take much to convincingly subvert or pervert an author's original meaning beyond or even against their own original intent. This is true even
when people are speaking straightforwardly, let alone metaphorically through literature. Context helps us understand and critique what we're reading; why the author made the choices that they made. The "Death of the Author" doesn't
improve our understanding of the work; it specifically
removes information that would be useful to helping our understanding.
On the other hand, I wouldn't argue that our own interpretations matter any less. We shouldn't
ignore what the author says about their own work, but we also shouldn't necessarily take it at face value either. Authorial intent, biographical information; these are additional pieces to the puzzle, which we should examine as critically as the work itself. This is why many argue that "everything is text"; those who espouse the Death of the Author would have us throw away half of the puzzle pieces.
This brings us back to the "intent vs. impact" argument, which is not really (or at least I should say not
always, this did come up in a thread primarily about fantasy literature and Tolkein more specifically) about literary or artistic criticism, but about the real-world impact of problematic statements or content, and how much (if it all) the owner of the statement intended those consequences to happen. I would argue that the we could apply the same level of reasoning. I think it's wrong to say intent doesn't matter; it's just that the impact matters
far more. We would, as a people, treat differently a man who stabbed somebody accidentally (say, they trip while holding knife) versus somebody who stabbed somebody on purpose. However, in both instances we would also acknowledge that harm was done (somebody got stabbed), that a specific person was responsible for that, and that
something ought to be done for reparations. We wouldn't charge the tripper with attempted murder or even assault, necessarily, but we would recognize that some form of apology is owed; that the person ought to attempt to make amends. We ought to carry the same sort of reasoning when the harm done is not necessarily physical (I would hope we could skip past childish and demonstrably false arguments that words cannot cause harm). That is, just because Tolkein nor Jackson intended their Middle-Earth Orcs to be racist caricatures doesn't not excuse them from the fact they kind of are, but we wouldn't lump these men in with, say, Lovecraft or Vox Day. Nor should that stop us from putting more thought into how we can utilize the tropes Fantasy has held on to in spite of drawing their origins in writings that were ignorantly harmful at best and outright malicious at worst.
And in many ways, we've already moved on from that. I'm not certain Tolkein is even the foremost touchstone for "orc" in our culture anymore; I would argue that distinction belongs to Warcraft, which at least since Warcraft 3 (and especially World of Warcraft) have presented orcs in a very different light than the typical purely evil, vaguely racially-tinged creation of Tolkein that most canonical D&D (outside some outliers like Eberron) still stubbornly clings too. I'd still wager that at most tables these days, however, orcs (and goblins and the like) hew much closer to their presentation in WoW than in Volo's Guide.