What is an Author?

By Michel Foucault
The Criticisms of the previous
book The Order of Things
The inadequate descriptions of
Buffon, Marx and their works
The monstrous familiesthe
associations of seemingly
irrelevant authors as if they
belong to the same discursive
family
Foucaults responses

I want to locate the rules that

formed a certain number of concepts
and theoretical relationships in their
works (1622)
asking why we are concerned
with the idea of authors at all, rather
than seeing discourse as the
groupings of texts and ideas.
(Klages)
The purposes & preliminary
thinking of author
[to] set aside a sociohistorical
analysis of the author as an
individual and the numerous
questions that deserve attention
in this context (1623)
Samuel Becketts question
What matter whos speaking?
The concerns of writing (1)
writing & discourse
[T]he writing of our day has
freed itself from the necessity of
expression; it only refers to
itself, yet it is not restricted to
the confines of interiority. On the
contrary, we recognize it in its
exterior deployment (1623)
The concerns of writing (2)
writing & language
Writing as an interplay of signs, the
play among signifiers
Thus the essential basis of this
writing is not the exalted emotions
related to the act of composition or
the insertion of a subject into
language. Rather, it is primarily
concerned with creating an opening
where the writing subject endlessly
disappear (1623)
The concerns of writing ecriture
(3)writing & death
The concept of writing as a
protection against death, achieving
immortality
ex. the Greek epic, The Arabian
Nights
Where a work had the duty of
creating immortality, it now attains
the right to kill, to become the
murderer of its author (1624)
The concerns of writing (3)
writing & death
So why does Foucault say the author
is dead? Its his way of saying that
author is decentered, shown to be only
a part of the structure, a subject
position, and not the centerBy
declaring the death of the author,
Foucault is deconstructing the idea
that the author is the origin of
something original, and replacing it with
the idea that the author is the product
or function of writing, of the text.
(Klages)
Author's disappearance &
work/ ecriture
How can an authors works be defined?
What should be included in his work?
The notion of ecriture
1. rather, it stands for a remarkably profound
contempt to elaborate the conditions of
any text, both the conditions of its spatial
dispersion and its temporal deployment.
(1625)
2. in emphasizing the play of signification
over any fixed or stable meaning, doesnt
really get rid of the idea of authorship
completely, but rather makes authors
transcendental rather than historical real
(Klages)
Problems with a proper name, the
authors name and their functions
The name of the author/a proper
name: a signifier that designates a
specific and discrete historical
individual (Klages)
The Authors name: it is situated in
the breach, among the discontinuities,
which gives rise to new groups of
discourse and their singular mode of
existenceis to characterize the
existence, circulation, and operation of
certain discourses within a society.
(1628)
The proper name of an author

The proper name and the name of

an author oscillate between
description (the ideas, the work
related) and designation (the
person). (1626)
The relation between signifier and
signifiedbetween proper name
and what it either designates or
describesis arbitrary and
separable (Klages)
ex. Shakespeare and the plays of
Shakespeare
4 features of texts which
create the author function (1)
Objects of appropriation, forms
of property
From this idea of locating
authorship in someone held
responsibility for writing or
speech came also the idea of
ownership of works, and the
idea of copyright rules. (Klages)
4 features of texts which
create the author function (2)
The author function is not a
universal or constant feature of
every text
1. The anonymous literary texts vs.
scientific texts required names
2. Since the 17th, 18th centuries
however: the objective scientific
texts vs. the literary works
evaluated on the basis of the
notion of the author
4 features of texts which
create the author function (3)
The author function is not formed
spontaneously through the simple
attribution of a discourse to an
individual
Rather, it results from various
cultural constructions, in which we
choose certain attributes of an
individual as authorial attributes,
and dismiss others. (Klages)
How the author is culturally
constructed: St. Jerome 4 criteria
attributed to a single author
Standard level of quality
Contradiction or conflicts of
ideasdenotes a field of
conceptual or theoretical
coherence
Stylistic uniformity
Definite historical figure in which
a series of events converge
How the author is culturally
constructed: Modern criticism on
textual study, a similar approach
The authors biography explains the
presence of certain events in the
texts
The author is the principle of unity
The author neutralizes contradictions
The author is the particular source of
expression manifested equally well in
texts, letters, fragments, etc
(Klages summery)
4 features of texts which
create the author function (4)
The text always bear signs that
refer to the author, or create the
author function (Klages)
ex. The pronoun I: narrator
and author
4 features of texts which
create the author function (5)
The author-function is tied to the legal
and institutional systems that circumscribe,
determine, and articulate the realm of
discourses; it does not operate in a uniform
manner in all discourses, at all times, an in
any given culture; it is not defined by the
spontaneous attribution of a text to its
creator, but through a series of precise and
complex procedures; it does not refer,
purely and simply, to an actual individual
insofar as it simultaneously gives rise to a
variety of egos and to a series of subjective
positions that individuals of any class may
come to occupy. (1631)
Transdiscursive position (1)
Initiators of discursive practices:
Freud, Marx, Radcliffe
1. These authors produced not only
their work, but the possibility and
rules of formation of other texts
2. Marx and Freud not only made
possible a certain number of
analogies that could be adopted by
future texts, but they also made
possible a certain number of
differences. (1632)
Transdiscursive position (2)

The initiation of discursive practices

appears similar to the founding of
any scientific endeavor
The initiation of a discursive
practice, unlike the founding of
science, overshadows and is
necessarily detached from its later
developments and transformations.
(1633)
Discourses returning to the
origin (1)
Different from the scientific
rediscoveries and reactivations
1. Rediscoveries: the effects of
analogy or isomorphism with current
forms of knowledge that allow the
perception of forgotten or obscured
figures. (1634)
2. Reactivations: the insertion of
discourse into totally new domains
of generalization, practice, and
transformation. (1634)
Discourses returning to the
origin (2)
Features of returning to the origin
1. Designates a movement with its
proper specificity, which characterizes
the initiation of discursive practices.
(1634)
2. They tend to reinforce the enigmatic
link between an author and his works.
(1634)
3. Form a relationship between
"fundamental" and mediate authors,
which is not identical to that which
links an ordinary text to its immediate
author. (1635)
Conclusions
Partially at the expense of themes
and concepts that an author places in
his work, the "author-function" could
also reveal the manner in which
discourse is articulated on the basis
of social relationships. (1635)
The subject (and its substitutes)
must be stripped of its creative role
and analyzed as a complex and
variable function of discourse. (Hsu)
Questions about the relations of
subjects to discourses
References

Klages, Mary. Michel Foucault:

What is an Author?
http://www.colorado.edu/English/EN
GL2012Klages/foucault.html
Hsu, Sophia. Michel Foucault's
What Is an Author?--An Outline.
http
://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criti
cism/postmodernism/foucault_author.h
tml