Foucault, "What is an Author?" (abstract)

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

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Created 21 May 1995

Revised 17 September 1996

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.