The People's Economics

I have a negative view of Postmodernism, but I can believe that its original arena of literary criticism it may have had something useful to say. In 1967 Roland Barthes wrote the essay The Death of the Author, in which he argued that literary criticism should get away from the idea that it's job was to find out what the author intended. The removal of the author from a privileged position is one aspect of postmodernism which I think makes a lot of sense. In a discussion about a story, if the author is taking part, should they be treated as just another participant in the discussion rather than having a privileged status?