5

AU T H O R

F or Michel Foucault, the term “author” denotes a function within our

modern discourse, by which iction’s “proliferation of meaning” is constrained
(EEW2, 222). This, of course, is the reversal of the notion that the “author” is
an unlimited source of creativity, through which writing gains its power of expres-
sion. Instead, the organization and interpretation of texts according to their “author,”
in Foucault’s account, functions like a kind of limiting principle that ultimately
restricts the possible meanings created through iction. The idea of the “author” as
an “author-function” can be understood on two different, but interrelated, registers.
First, Foucault’s most direct engagement with the idea of the author occurs in his
1969 work “What Is an Author?” in which he argues that the idea that the “death of
the author” (a notion found in then contemporary literary criticism) will not properly
occur until our modern discourse changes into a new form (EEW2, 222). Second, in
The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault argues that the notion of the author is part of
a larger “mass of notions” whose function is to guarantee the continuity of historical
progression, primarily in terms of understanding meaning as produced solely in and
through the subject (EAK, 21). Here, we shall primarily examine the irst of these
two registers, Foucault’s discussion of the author in “What Is an Author?” However,
near the end of this entry, we shall briely look at the role of the author in Foucault’s
larger understanding of discourse during his archaeological period.
Foucault presented “What Is an Author?” as a lecture in February 1969 before
the Société Française de philosophie. As already mentioned, Foucault directly
engages with the idea of the “death of the author.” The term “the death of the author”
is meant to denote the movement within French literary criticism during the 1960s
that sought to overcome the idea that a text is both the product and the container of
its creator’s hidden and secret intentions. This idea has its most explicit articulation
in Roland Barthes’s 1977 essay “The Death of the Author.” In this essay, Barthes
argues that writing is “the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin,” in

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 Author / 25

the sense that “it is language which speaks” and not the author (Barthes 1977, 142).
As such, to write is to “perform” language rather than to transcribe into a material
form one’s own intentions. Thus, to call for the death of the author is to call for the
realization that writing must not be constrained in meaning by the imposition of an
author.
“What Is an Author?” begins with Foucault outlining the “two themes” of mod-
ern literary theory to which he is generally sympathetic: (1) that writing, concep-
tually, has been freed from “the theme of expression” (EEW2, 206) and (2) that
writing is no longer conceived of as a kind of immortality for the writer, but rather
a “voluntary self-effacement” (EEW2, 206). As regards the irst, Foucault adopts the
general insight from Saussure that language can be understood as a system without
reference to a speaking individual. Foucault writes that “Referring only to itself, but
without being restricted to the conines of its interiority, writing is identiied with its
own unfolded exteriority” (EEW2, 206). Since language does not require a speaking
individual for its own internal coherence, writing can no longer be thought of as the
“expression” of the intentions of the writing subject. The second theme, the author’s
self-effacement, is linked to the irst. If writing can be understood free of the idea
that it is originally tied to the writer’s expression, then the act of writing itself must,
as Barthes puts it, “reach that point where only language acts” (Barthes 1977, 143).
Indeed, Foucault tells us that the writer “must assume the role of the dead person in
the game of writing” (EEW2, 207).
However, although Foucault adopts the idea of writing, he argues that it is much
too quick to claim, as Barthes does in “The Death of the Author,” that the death of
the author has been achieved. To this end, Foucault shows how two contemporary
ideas about how we are to understand the absence of the author in fact presuppose
the very entity that they deny. The irst notion that is supposed to make sense of
the author’s absence is that of the work (œuvre). As Foucault understands it, the
notion of the work determines the relationships between texts in terms of an overall
structure that can be explicated in such a way that, supposedly, does not rely on any
notion of the author. Yet, on closer inspection, the structure of a work exists only in
reference to an individual that has been labeled as an author. The question is: how
does one actually delimit the sphere of texts accepted as the work? What constitutes,
for instance, Nietzsche’s work? By what criteria does one choose to accept or reject
a grocery receipt as part of a work? Indeed, Foucault asks, “How can one deine a
work amid the millions of traces left by someone after his death” (EEW2, 207)?
The work can only be deined through some reference to those texts that are pro-
duced through some kind of presupposed authorial intent. The second notion that
is supposed to account for the absence of the author is Derrida’s notion of writing
(écriture) (EEW2, 208). Using language similar to his critique of phenomenology in
The Order of Things, Foucault argues that this notion of writing “seems to transpose
the empirical characteristics of the author into the transcendental” by keeping alive

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 26 / Harry A. Nethery IV

“those representations that formed a particular image of the author” (EEW2, 208–
209). Speciically, the idea of writing as absence “seems to be a simple repetition,
in transcendental terms, of both the religious principle of inalterable and yet never
fulilled tradition, and the aesthetic principle of the work’s survival, its perpetuation
beyond the author’s death, and its enigmatic excess in relation to him” (EEW2, 208).
In other words, the idea that meaning is given through absence seems to take the
empirical guarantor of meaning (the author) and, through effacing it, transforms it
into the form of a transcendental absence, which is the new guarantor of meaning.
As an absence, the author still haunts writing. For Foucault, both attempts to under-
stand the absence of the author therefore fail.
So, what is an author, for Foucault? Foucault claims that the author should be
understood not as an element within a discourse but rather as a role that plays a clas-
siicatory function (EEW2, 210). That the notion of the author is a role rather than
an element of discourse can be seen through the various problems that arise if we try
to equate the role of the author with the element of the proper name. For instance,
a proper name is one of simple reference, in the sense that it designates some indi-
vidual. However, when used in the role of an author, the relation of reference of the
name changes. As an author, the name “Aristotle” does not point simply to some
individual. Rather, it is descriptive: the name “Aristotle” indicates “the author of the
Analytics” or “the founder of ontology” (EEW2, 209). Furthermore, imagine if we
were to ind out that all of Plato’s texts were actually written by Aristotle. The rela-
tionship of reference between the proper name “Aristotle” and the individual would
not change – but the relationship between Aristotle as an author, his texts, and their
interrelationships would change.
As such, the term “author” does not simply designate the reference between a
proper name and a group of texts. Rather, it is a kind of role that a name can assume,
or more speciically a discursive space that may be occupied by a subject, which
serves two functions: (1) to “manifest the appearance of a certain discursive set” and
(2) to manifest “the status of this discourse within a society or culture” (EEW2, 211).
First, the author’s name serves to delimit a number of texts and the internal relation-
ship between them (EEW2, 210). For example, “Aristotle” refers to a group of texts
that were written by him and the relationships among them such as their chronolog-
ical order. Second, for Foucault, the name of the author gives a kind of status to the
speech of the particular discourse: “it is a speech that must be received in a certain
mode and that, in a given culture, must receive a certain status” (EEW2, 211). Thus,
the notion of the author must be understood not as an element but rather as a func-
tion – speciically, the author-function.
The author-function, in its role of indicating a discursive set and its privileged
speech, has four characteristics. First, the author-function is tied to systems of own-
ership, and it is through these systems of ownership that the author-function is able
to set a limit on writing (EEW2, 211). For Foucault, writing is transgressive because

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 Author / 27

it has become bound up with “rules concerning author’s rights, author-publisher

relations, [and] rights of reproductions” (EEW2, 212). Second, the author-func-
tion will vary within a discourse, and across discourses and times (ibid.). That is,
this function is not a universal constant. For instance, the valence between author
and text in terms of literary and scientiic text changed within the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries (ibid.). Previously, literary texts with anonymous authors were
accepted on their own terms, whereas the truth of a scientiic text was linked to the
name of the author. Then, an inversion or chiasm between author and text occurred
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The truth of scientiic texts became
tied to the content of the text itself rather than the name of the author, and literary
texts only became accepted when assigned a proper name. If an anonymous literary
text is found, Foucault writes, “the game becomes one of rediscovering the author”
(EEW2, 213). Third, the author-function does not spontaneously develop but is
instead the result of a long and complex operation (ibid.). To illustrate this char-
acteristic, Foucault argues that the way in which contemporary literary criticism
constructs the author is derived from the authentication of texts within the Christian
tradition (EEW2, 214). For instance, Saint Jerome wrote that a number of methods
must be used to classify texts in accordance with the saintliness of the author, one
of which was that if any text contradicted the main thesis of the group of texts, then
it was to be rejected. Similarly, Foucault argues that in literary criticism, at a very
basic level, there is still the attempt to resolve contradictions within an author’s work
(EEW2, 215). Finally, the author-function refers to “positions that can be occupied
by different classes of individuals” rather than the simple reference to some real
individual (EEW2, 216). This can be seen through the examination of the personal
pronouns within a mathematical text. As Foucault points out, the author of the pref-
ace indicates the writer of the text who “completed a certain task” (EEW2, 216).
However, the demonstrations within the text itself do not refer to this same individ-
ual author. The demonstrations push the idea of the author into a kind of anonymity,
as it is the demonstrations themselves that guarantee the truth of the text, such that
anyone could have written it.
The notion of the author is not limited solely to the author of a literary text. In
fact, for Foucault, we can understand the founders of various discourses as endowed
with the author-function, but in a way that is fundamentally different from the
author-function within a literary text, painting, or piece of music (EEW2, 217). The
difference lies in the way that the founder of a discourse has “produced something
else: the possibilities and the rules for the formation of other texts” (ibid.). This is
not to be understood as the possibility of duplication, such as within the founding
of the gothic novel. The gothic novel has a certain set of requirements, and for any
novel to be gothic, it must it these requirements. However, the founding of psycho-
analysis is much different. The name “Freud” does not designate a series of condi-
tions for the duplication of his texts. Rather, it indicates a set of possibilities and rules

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 28 / Harry A. Nethery IV

for further texts. In addition, unlike a scientiic text, the author of a discourse does
not participate within the texts that follow the institution of the discourse. For exam-
ple, the truth of a text in physics is not related back to the work of Galileo, Newton,
or Einstein. In Foucault’s account, truth in psychoanalysis is always referred back to
the work of Freud, its founder. This foundational relation always necessitates, again
in language similar to the chapter “Man and His Doubles” in The Order of Things, a
“return to the origin” within a discourse, in which the modiication of a discourse is
always related to the work of its founders. Furthermore, by referring the modiica-
tion of a discourse back to its origin, the author-function guarantees the continuity
of a discourse, as this reference back does not allow for modiication outside the
relation itself.
We have now seen how the author-function operates, its various character-
istics, and that it operates not only within literary texts but within the founding
of discourses as such. Yet, we have not adequately examined the way in which the
author-function is a principle of constraint or limitation, and thus the reversal of
the traditional notion of the author. For Foucault, we traditionally understand the
author as a source of creative expression, “the genial creator of a work,” or a “per-
petual surging of invention” (EEW2, 221). However, if we understand the author
instead as a kind of discursive position, the assignment of an author to a group of
texts does not designate a source of creative invention but rather functions as a limit
on how texts can be arranged and understood. Foucault writes,

The author is not an indeinite source of signiications that ill a work; the author
does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our
culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses; in short by which one impedes the
free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition, and
recomposition of iction. (EEW2, 221)

Although here Foucault is discussing iction, the idea that the author is a principle of
limitation can also be seen within the founding of a discourse, speciically as regards
Foucault’s notion of the “return to the origin.” If the modiications of a discourse must
always be referred back to its origin (i.e., its founder), then there is no possibility for the
discourse to change completely, and thus meaning is constrained. That is, if psychoanal-
ysis is always referred back to Freud, it can never be anything but Freudian. Thus, any
proliferation of meaning within psychoanalysis must always be related back to Freud,
and through this relation some meanings are accepted whereas others are rejected.
Since the notion of the author is tied to discourse, the author cannot be said to
have died or disappeared until our modern discursive formation changes into a new
one. That is, our current discourse cannot simply drop the author-function. Its shape
must change completely, and in such a way that it does not institute the author-
function. In this regard, Foucault writes,

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 Author / 29

I think that, as our society changes, at the very moment when it is in the process
of changing, the author function will disappear, and in such a manner that iction
and its polysemous texts will once again function according to another mode, but
still with a system of constraint – one that will no longer be the author but will
have to be determined, or, perhaps, experienced. (EEW2, 222)

As such, for Foucault, when our discursive formation changes into a new one, it is not
that the author will die but that it will disappear completely.
The notion of the author can also be understood in terms of Foucault’s larger
project during the “archaeological period” of his career. In The Archaeology of
Knowledge, Foucault argues that the analysis of the ields of discourse within history
requires that “we must rid ourselves of a whole mass of notions, each of which, in
its own way, diversiies the theme of continuity” (EAK, 21). When historians ana-
lyze historical events, they make use of a set of presuppositions that allow them
to constitute continuity. They presuppose a picture of the subject as the source of
all meaning, and historical events then become organized in terms of a historical
progression, along the lines of the development of rationality. As such, in order to
describe historical events in terms of, for instance, rupture and chance, one must
rid oneself of all the notions that are related to this picture of the subject. Although
Foucault does not explicitly name the author in this discussion, he discusses a num-
ber of notions that relate to the discussion of the author in his work “What Is an
Author?” Speciically, in The Archaeology of Knowledge, the notions of the book and
the œuvre (work) must be jettisoned. Furthermore, Foucault argues that we must also
rid ourselves of two “linked, but opposite themes”: (1) the secret origin and (2) the
already-said (EAK, 25). In a discussion reminiscent of the “return to the origin” in
“What Is an Author?” Foucault argues that historians treat history as a kind of “quest
for and the repetition of an origin that eludes all historical determination,” since
the origin can never be made present (EAK, 36, 25). Furthermore, this secret origin
possesses an “already-said,” in the sense that the origin has a meaning itself that can
never be made manifest, and it is thus the historian’s job to unearth and interpret
the already-said of history. Both of these themes serve to guarantee the continuity
of discourse by relating the understanding of history back to an immutable origin,
which, since we can never have its original present to us, requires constant reinter-
pretation. The origin has the function of guaranteeing continuity, as does the notion
of the author in terms of the founder of a discourse. As such, we can see a repetition
of this limiting function within his overall project.
We are now in a position to understand the role of the notion of the author
within Foucault’s “archaeological” period. The author is best understood as a kind
of function, which, through a variety of operations, guarantees the continuity of a
discourse and its progression into the igure through the limitation of the prolifer-
ation of meaning within a given discourse. That is, the author “allows a limitation

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 30 / Harry A. Nethery IV

of the cancerous and dangerous proliferation of signiications within a world where

one is thrifty not only with one’s resources and riches but also with one’s discourses
and their signiications” (EEW2, 221). The notion of the author in Foucault is one
of a mass of notions whose function is to guarantee the continuity of discourse, thus
disallowing the rupture or change of a given discourse into a new one.

Harry A. Nethery IV

See Also
Archaeology
Language
Literature

Suggested Reading
Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath. London: Fontana Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.

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