“What Is an Author?”

Michel Foucault, “Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?” Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie 63, No. 3 (1969) 73-104; repr. Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?” Language, Counter-memory, Practice, Ed. Donald F. Bouchard, Trans. D. F. Bouchard, Sherry Simon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977) 113-38.

Outline

I.  “Author” as an open question (113)
 

A. Relationship between author and text (113)

  • discusses criticisms of his previous book, Order of Things

B. Beckett: “what does it matter who is speaking?”: the immanent rule of contemporary writing (115.3)
  1.  Writing as free from necessity of expression (self-referential) (116.1)
2.  Kinship between writing and death: writing as a voluntary effacement of author (116.2)
 

C. False notions of replacement that actually preserve privilege of author (118.2)
  1.  Study of a particular literary work (118.2-119.1)
2.  Écriture/writing (119.2)

II. Examining the empty space left by author’s disappearance (121)
 

A. What is an author’s name: how does it function? (121.1)

 

1.  Functions of a proper name: description versus designation (121.1-122.3)
2.  Author’s name as a means of classifying/grouping texts (123.1)
3.  Marks reception and regulation of text in a particular culture (123.1)

Summary (123.2-124.1): author function characterizes the existence, circulation and operation of certain discourses in a society or discipline
 

B. The “author” as a function of discourse (124.2)
  1.  Discourses as objects of ownership/possession (124.3)
2.  Author function is not a universal or constant feature (125.2)
3.  Author function is not a spontaneous development, but result of complex cultural construction/projection that has been assigned a realistic dimension (127.2)
4.  Some constants in the construction of the author function: Christian tradition: St. Jerome’s four principles (128.1)
  a. Standard of quality
b. Conceptual coherence
c. Stylistic unity
d. Exclude texts that refer to persons and events subsequent to death of author
  5.  Internal references to plurality of egos (personal pronouns, adverbs of time and place, verb tense)

III. Transdiscursive authors (131.2)
 

A. Authors of theories, traditions, disciplines (e.g., Homer, Aristotle, Church Fathers) (131.2-3)

B. 19th century: initiators of discursive practices, founders of fields of study: Marx, Freud, Galileo, Cuvier, Saussure (131.4-133)
  1.  These authors made heterogenous transformations possible (131.4-132.1)
2.  Initiated subsequent heterogenous transformations (unlike reactivation in science): Freud (131.4, 133.2, 136.1), Marx (131.4, 136.1), Galileo (133.1, 135), Cuvier (133.1), Chomsky (134.2), Serres (132.2.-134.1)
3.  “Return to origin” in order to transform discursive practice (137.3)

IV. Conclusion: why is this important? (136.4)
 

A. Theoretical reasons (137.1)
  1.  Provide basis for analysis of typology of discourse (137.1)
2.  Introduction to historical analysis of the mode of existence of discourse (137.2)
3.  Re-examine privileges of subject (137.3)
 

B. Reexamine status of author (137.3-end)
 

Replace old humanistic questions about authors with new questions about author functions:

“What are the modes of existence of this discourse?”
“Where does it come from; how is it circulated; who controls it?”
“What placements are determined for possible subjects?”
“Who can fulfill these diverse functions of the subject?”

(The pagination refers to English transation in Language, Counter-memory, Practice)