In What is an Author?, Foucault seeks to identify the significance of the author and how an author exists through his or her writings. He begins his essay by explaining how the concept of the “author” has evolved throughout history, and proceeds by citing Beckett. After some explanation, Foucault concludes that an author must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing. Although he acknowledges that philosophers and critics have taken note of the disappearance or “death” of the author, Foucault brazenly asserts that the topic at hand hasn't been adequately addressed.
He first examines the difficulty in universality of the term 'work' by questioning the extent to which a text can be considered a work. Then he moves on to explain the “notion of writing” and its contribution to the author's disappearance. “Writing seems to transpose the empirical characteristics of the author into a transcendental anonymity”(Foucault, 208).
Furthermore, Foucault addresses the complexity of the author's proper name in relation to the works created and concludes that “an author's name is not simply an element in a discourse...it performs a certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function”(Foucault, 210). Foucault then goes on to explain the concept of the “author function” with four main characteristics: 1) it is linked to the legal system and arises as a result of the need to punish those responsible for transgressive statements 2) it doesn't affect all texts in the same way 3) it is more complex than it appears to be 4) the term “author” doesn't only refer to a real individual. Following his analysis, Foucault highlights the fact that society uses the same methods to determine the author of an unknown work as the manner that was originally derived from Christian tradition.
Nearing the conclusion of the essay, Foucault asserts that the author is part of a large system of beliefs that serve to limit and restrict meaning, and ultimately concludes that the “author function” may soon disappear.
This text, I believe, is intended for a scholarly audience that is well versed in academic works such as those of Marx and Derrida. From the onset of this work, Foucault's intellectual diction is very evident. I personally had a dictionary nearby to look up words such such as 'scansion' and 'transcendental.' In addition to high level diction, the citations of works such as Bacon's Organon and Aristotle's Analytics are evidence of works being cited to allure to a particular scholastic audience. Foucault anticipates and addresses possible rebuttals and criticisms to his claims in his text and acknowledges that his argument is intended to address a narrow and specific scope of the definition of 'author'. He writes, “No doubt, analysis could discover still more characteristic traits of the author function. I will limit myself to these four, however, because they seem both the most visible and the most important” (Foucault, 216)
I thought that Foucault's writing on the concept of what defines a 'work' was quite interesting and intriguing. Where do we draw the line between what constitutes a work versus just a scribble? Are only certain people that are considered “authors” eligible to create works? If so, are all their thoughts and writings considered works? Before reading this text, I didn't even consider the difficulty in trying to define something as simple, or so I thought, as a “work”. As Foucault writes, “The word work and the unity that it designates are probably as problematic as the status of the author's individuality.” (Foucault , 208)
However, I disagree with Foucault's conclusion that Saint Jerome's four criteria of authenticity define the four modalities according to which modern criticism brings the author function into play. More specifically, I disagree with the following criteria that Saint Jerome makes:
“...; (2) the same should be done [withdrawn from the list of the author's works] if certain texts contradict the doctrine expounded in the author's other works (the author is thus defined as a field of conceptual or theoretical coherence)...”
When I read this, the first thing that came to my mind was Plato. His viewpoints seem to evolve, and in some instances, contradict his earlier works. Based on Saint Jerome's paradigm, Plato cannot be the author of both works.
Ultimately, Foucault's work provided some new insight on the significance of the “author” in a literary context. Although I don't agree with all of the points made in this essay, this is undoubtedly a well-written and well thought out analysis.
By: Parth Bhatt
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