Michel Foucault. "What Is an Author?" Twentieth-Century Literary Theory.
Ed. Vassilis Lambropoulos and David Neal Miller. Albany: State University
Press of New York, 1987. 124-42.
Foucault proceeds in a fashion that may be termed his signature, for he
does not wish to really pin down exactly what is an author per se,
and seeks to identify the author in terms of how an author exists. The
attention is thus turned away from a purely historically or socially based
definition, as the relationship between the author and the text take center
stage. This key relationship is the principal focus of the essay. "I wish
to restrict myself to the singular relationship that holds between an author
and a text, the manner in a which a text apparently point to this figure
who is outside and precedes it." Foucault accepts that the author is dead
and the text begins to appear more as a "game" of language, but this only
raises more questions as we see so many accretions that the author seems
to attract. What constitutes an author's work? What should be excluded
or included, and at what point does a person begin to function as an author?
Foucault also directs attention to the name of the author and its role
in classifying works, both works which fall under one name and those which
fall under another. Thus, one may say that Baudelaire's poetry is Baudelairian,
and one may also say that the works of another poet may be Baudelairian.
Foucault situates the name of the author within those aspects which comprise
a broader authorial function. The author may also be held as a standard
of quality, Shakespeare or Flaubert or Austen being a standard against
which others works are judged. Finally, the author may be considered an
actual, historical person to which the text points or refers. Holding tightly
to his constant interest in the discursive elements that comprise a given
society, Foucault designates the author as a function of discourse itself.
"In this sense, the function of an author is to characterize the existence,
circulation, and operation of certain discourses within a society." What
becomes clear is that Foucault sees the author-function as one which reveals
the convergence of a complex web of discursive practices. As these practices
change or disappear and as new practices appear, the author-function will
necessarily reflect those changes. Thus, the author-function can be described
in sociohistorical terms as a practice or group of practices. (John
R. Durant.)
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Michael Hancher
Department of English, University of Minnesota
URL: http://umn.edu/home/mh/ebibjd1.html
Comments to: mh@umn.edu
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