Foucault - "What is an Author?"

Michel Foucault

1.     “What is an Author?”

a.     What is an author remains an open question as a function within discourse.

b.     In writing on theories Foucault was criticized for not fully explaining the ideas of the authors.

                                               i.     He had no intention of doing so.

c.     This essay will not cover the sociohistoric of the author.

                                               i.     It will focus on the “singular relationship” between the author and the text.

1.     The text appearing to pint to the author who is outside it and precedes it.

                                             ii.     What does it matter who speaking?

1.     It characterizes our way of speaking and writing.

2.     It slights our customary attention to the finished product.

3.     Two themes on writing:

a.     It is no longer bound to “expression.”

                                                                                                     i.     We recognize it in its exterior deployment.  It’s regulated less by signs and more by the nature of signifiers.

                                                                                                   ii.     As it unfolds it is always testing the limits of its “regularity.”

                                                                                                  iii.     It is primarily concerned with creating an opening where the writing subject endlessly disappears.

1.     It is not about the exalted emotions related to the act of composition or the insertion of a subject into language.

b.     It is a relationship between writing and death.

                                                                                                     i.     Stories use to be about immortalizing the hero by having them do grand deeds.

                                                                                                   ii.     Stories have been used as a protection from death.

                                                                                                  iii.     These notions have been transformed by our culture.

                                                                                                  iv.     Writing is now linked to sacrifice of life.

                                                                                                   v.     Instead of protecting the author, writing is now presented as sacrificing the author.

                                                                                                  vi.     A keen relationship between author and work is formed.

4.     Criticism should concern itself with the structures of a work and studied for their intrinsic and internal relationships.

a.     Not to reconstitute an authors thought and experience through their work.

5.     What constitutes work.

a.     Certainly the published works and drafts.

b.     How much of the Authors personal life and experiences should be published.

6.     Ecriture: The attempt to elaborate the conditions of any text, both the conditions of its spatial dispersion and its temporal deployment.

                                            iii.     We should re-examine the empty space left by the disappearance of the author.

                                            iv.     The name of the author is a description.

1.     The name of an author implies designations and attributes.  A fundamental change to something about the author changes the meaning of the name of the author.

2.     The name serves as a means of classification.

3.     The name can encompass a group of works that imply homogeneity, filiation, authentification or common utilization.

4.     It establishes meaning by the culture it is in.

5.     The name remains on the contours of a text that define their form and characterize their mode of existence.

                                             v.     We need to examine how we approach the idea of authors and texts and how they are different from other approaches.  Four points:

1.     The discourse is that of property.

a.     Changes in discourse occurred when texts became protected through copyrights.

2.     The author-text (function) relationship is not required for discourse.

a.     Many fold tales and stories have been circulated with author unknown.

b.     Scientific texts in the middle ages were considered truthful only if the author’s name was attached.

                                                                                                     i.     The texts moved to authentification based on their own merits and positioned within an anonymous conceptual system of established truths and methods of verification.

                                                                                                   ii.     The notion of author disappeared except to denote a theory.

c.     Literary discourse was only acceptable if it carried an author’s name.

3.     Discourse of the author is complex and needs to construct a rational entity that we call the author.

a.     Includes intent and style and derives from the process of authentification.

b.     Saint Jerome and four criteria for determining if works are from the same author.

                                                                                                     i.     Those that are inferior.

                                                                                                   ii.     Those whose ideas conflict with the doctrine expressed in the others.

                                                                                                  iii.     Those written in a different style and containing words and phrases not found in other works.

                                                                                                  iv.     Those referring to historical events after the death of the author.

c.     Today’s need for the author.

                                                                                                     i.     They explain certain events, distortions or modifications.

                                                                                                   ii.     Constitutes a principle unity in writing.

                                                                                                  iii.     Serves to neutralize contradictions.

                                                                                                  iv.     A particular source of expression

4.     Author function applies to music, painting and other fields.

d.     Authors can be producers of theories or new traditions in books.

                                               i.     Such authors occupy a transdiscursive position.

                                             ii.     Initiators o Discursive Practices:  They created possibility and rules of formation of other texts.

1.     Marx and Freud didn’t just created texts, but the possibility of infinite discourse.

                                            iii.     Discussion on founders of scientific fields and novelists.

1.     Authors of multiple texts might be associated with the creation of a genre.  However, the work doesn’t speak or offer discourse outside of it’s self described genre.

2.      Science is distinct, but speaks to general observations of larger phenomena.  Revelation of the linear, of the what is.

3.     Initiators are more of an exploratory approach yielding numerous and varied applications.

4.     Science tends to be anchored to the source or previous work.  Initiator’s work can move beyond and remove itself from the source.

e.     The essay is meant as a possible typology for discourse.

                                               i.     It would be an exploration or investigation.  It doesn’t have the boundaries and irreducibility of grammar or other structured field.

            Works Cited

Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010.  1469-1490. Print.