MICHEL FOUCAULT "WHAT IS AN AUTHOR?" (SYNOPSIS BY ANDRE HAREWOOD)

Foucault is concerned with the construction of the ‘author’ and the ways in which s/he relates both to the text and the related discourse.

            His aim here is to investigate the author since “(t)he question of the author demands a direct response” (139) and he focuses his argument on the “singular relationship… between an author and a text, the manner in which a text apparently points to this figure who is outside and precedes it” (139). He notes 2 main themes in modern writing. Firstly, modern writing is self-reflexive, i.e. “it only refers to itself” (139). It is not neo-Romantic in the sense of expression; the author is lost in modern writing since it is “primarily concerned with creating an opening where the writing subject endlessly disappears” (139). Secondly, the very act of writing is “now linked to sacrifice and the sacrifice” (139-140) of the author him/herself. Any of the author’s actual personality is destroyed by and is not present in the text. It is not the author personally that needs representation, but what he proffers. The author cannot personally be known from the text, only his relationship with the text can be discerned.

Foucault questions whether the ramifications of such thought have been fully developed, postulating that the “themes destined to replace the privileged position accorded the author have merely served to arrest the possibility of genuine change” (140) and movement beyond criticism’s continued focus on the (absent) author. He examines two of these themes.

Firstly, “the thesis of a work” (140). Literary criticism should not focus on an expressive link between author and work, it “should concern itself with the structures of a work” (140), i.e. its form. Foucault questions whether the semiotic construct of a ‘work’ can be divorced from that of an ‘author’? Foucault seems to imply that they have a mutually exclusive and referential relationship. If the concept of author is ‘killed’, then what of the related concept of work? Is it reduced to “little more, perhaps, than rolls of paper on which (the non-author) endlessly unraveled his fantasies?” (140) or must we reconsider the ways in which a ‘work’ is constructed by dominant critical discursive ideology? The term ‘author’ is the flipside of the term ‘work’ and they are inseparable. Foucault, in my opinion, seems to say that, in order to take full advantage of the loss of the author, we must change the semiotics of literary criticism in reference to the ‘work’ and use language that negates the author as completely as the text itself does.

The next theme is écriture, i.e. the act of writing and the metaphysical nature of writing as an entity in itself. Instead of removing the author entirely, écriture has merely transferred the “empirical characteristics” (141) of an individuated author onto an amorphous, anonymous presence that lacks the particulars but retains the general authorial qualities. For Foucault, “the concept of writing as absence” (141) merely continues previous expressivist thought on the ‘work’ as an extension of the ‘author’; to read a ‘work’ is to contemplate the author’s absence and thereby contemplate the ‘author’ him/herself. “Écriture sustains the privileges of the author” (141) by keeping intact the concept of the ‘work’ a priori or having prior existence in and as being the product of the mind of the absent ‘author’. Foucault rhetorically questions whether there should be a clear demarcation between the liberation from the “conceptual framework” (141) linking author to work within “our present discontinuities” (141) and the expressivist 19^th Century “historical and transcendental tradition” (141) that inextricably links author to work.

“Reapportionment of this void” (141) left behind by the author’s disappearance concerns Foucault. He points out “the problems that arise in the use of an author’s name” (141) and its function. Author and named (or ‘authored’) work do not share the same relationship as a proper name and the person being named. To change details about a person does not modify or sever the connection between the name and the person. To change some of the details of Shakespeare’s life “would not modify the functioning of the author’s name” (141) but, severing the author’s connection with ‘his’ works would “affect the manner in which the author’s name functions” (142), as would the attribution of other works to the author. The negation of a ‘real’ person’s existence lacks the far-reaching philosophical or literary implications possessed by the negation of an author’s existence.

The author’s name legitimizes a discourse and its doctrines, and “characterizes (its) particular manner of existence” (142) on the basis of homogeneity. A named discourse is “not to be immediately consumed and forgotten” and it is meant to seem, i.e. it is presented as, superior and extraordinary, not comparable with common words or thoughts. “The function of an author is to characterize the existence, circulation and operation of certain discourses within a society” (142); the author’s name differentiates one discourse from another and adds legitimacy and agency to the discourse it is associated with or, rather, the discourse that has associated itself with that name in order to garner agency and legitimacy.

Foucault continues by revealing four features associated with authored texts, the “characteristics of a discourse (that) determine its difference from other discourses” (142).

1)      Authored texts are “objects of appropriation” (142), the property of the author. This ascribing of text (or ‘work’) to an author is a form of societal control, deciding what texts and related discourses are to be read and projected in society.

2)      The validating “‘author-function’ is not universal or constant in all discourse” (143). “The meaning and value attributed” (143) to literary texts, previously judged on their antiquity as a “sufficient guarantee of their authenticity” (143), now rested solely on the associated author’s name, and anonymity would only lead to a search for the author for validation.

3)      The ‘author’ is constructed by our reading (or misreading) of texts ascribed to him/her. Any ‘personal’ attributes seen are “projections” (143) based on textual info that imply the author’s genius, uniqueness and originality. This Christian method of authenticating texts and forming canons relies on internal and external coherence within a text or between texts, respectively. The modern author adds human fallibility, allowing for differences within or between texts by the same author and in the same canon.

4)      Personal pronouns, adverbs of place and time, and verb conjunctions are “shifters” (144), signs in texts that refer to the author. They “refer to a real person” (144) in authorless texts but, in authored texts, there is a division between the actual writer and the “second self” (144) presented in the text which is referred to by ‘shifters’. The second self’s “similarity to the author” (144) changes during the text. The ‘author-function’ arises out of “(the) scission, in the division” (144) of the actual writer from the text’s persona. In the text, no real individual is referred to, only a pluralistic cross-section of multiple attributes, possible egos and standpoints.

Foucault identifies a meta-position that an author can occupy above that of writer of a text. A “transdiscursive … initiator” (145) is an author who has founded a discourse, an umbrella rubric under which other authors produce works that follow in their established vein and who has “cleared a space for the introduction of elements other than their own, which, nevertheless, remain within (that) field of discourse” (145). Initiators’ works are “the primary points of reference” (146) for the discourses that stem from them, whether the new approaches agree with the old or not. A ‘return’ to the source material can lead to fundamental shifts in the understanding of the discourse depending on the reinterpretative focus applied.

Foucault argues that  the ‘author-function’ differs between works and the discourses stemming from them, and puts forward a “historical analysis of discourse” (147) and the social forces that act on it. The author / ‘subject’ should not be thought of as an “originator” (148) but in terms of how s/he functions in and intervenes in discourse, “systems of dependence” (148), and power. The subject is relieved of the author’s creative agency and analyzed as a complex and variable function of discourse in terms of how the subject affects discourse, the conditions necessary for this, and its possible outcomes. He argues for a shift from author-centric critical questioning to a questioning of discourse, its variable forms, what / who creates / controls these forms, how / why they do it, and how subjects are objectified within its discursive framework.

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