Who among the following considers a text as a ‘site of struggle between authority and popular culture”?

The correct option is Mikhail Bakhtin.

Mikhail Bakhtin, the influential Russian literary critic and philosopher, is well-known for his theories on language, literature, and culture, particularly the concepts of heteroglossia, dialogism, and the carnivalesque.
In his view, language and texts are not static or unified systems dominated by a single authoritative voice. Instead, he conceptualizes a text as a dynamic "site of struggle" where different social voices, ideologies, and cultural forces clash.

This struggle typically occurs between:
1. Centripetal forces (Authority): The official, authoritative, and dominant language or ideology that seeks to impose order, centralization, and a single unified meaning (monoglossia) on the text.
2. Centrifugal forces (Popular Culture): The unofficial, decentralized, and diverse voices of the public or popular culture that resist authority, introduce multiple perspectives (heteroglossia), and disrupt the official order through laughter, parody, and subversion (often exemplified in his analysis of the carnivalesque in the works of Rabelais).

Therefore, Bakhtin's theoretical framework directly defines a text as a site of dialogic confrontation and negotiation between official authority and popular cultural expressions.