Tabassum Sheikh

EP19591035

LTC 612

Foucault in his essay “what is an Author” highlights, that traditional notion of

individualisation of the author has shifted in the contemporary world. He states

that the “solid and fundamental” concept of authorship hasn’t always existed. He

explores, how the connection of writing and death is changed from ancient times,

when the term author was privileged, into the most recent idea of authorship.

Unlike the idea of Barthes i.e Author is dead, the reader is born”, Foucault

presents the relationship between writing and death that gives birth to the author.

He partly implicit the idea of Barthes and presents the displacement of the author

to the outskirts of the text.

Foucault is not interested in the author as a person or as an individual. He is of

the view that the author remains outside of the structure of the text, therefore he

cannot govern the text but, he can not be completely absent or dead. Instead of

traditionally seeing the author simply as a person who writes, Foucault sees

authorship as a function of the writing itself. He presents the idea that the

presence of the author is necessary, as text uses the author as a function of itself.

To denaturalize the conventional role of “authorship he uses the term “author

function” which is more likely the set of beliefs and governing the production

and circulation of the text.

According to the idea of author-function when the text in transgressive or

libellous, it needs its author to take responsibility. Initially the text which was

under the interest of dominant religious ideology was considered to be sacred

while the others were unsacred. However, after the 18th century, the concept of
legalizing the author came into existence and the author’s name became an

important part of the texts. e.g. Today, we might focus on the importance of the

author to copyright laws and charges of plagiarism.

Secondly, author function is not constant or universal for all discourses which

also includes cultural myths jokes folk tales etc. For instance, in middle ages,

many poets and writings were anonymous because at that period scientific

discourse needs the name of the author and he was used as a function but in

recent times the role of authorship doesn't seem to affect scientific texts as much

as it affects literary texts. This shift happens to acquire the certainty that one is

interpreting the text from its origin i.e author. Although Liberal humanist

diminishes the author apparently but in the process of text analysis, they assert

the presence of the author.

Thirdly, the idea of author-function doesn’t develop spontaneously as the

attribution of the discourse. . For instance, the ideals and pioneers of Augustan

age such as Pope and Dryden followed the classical tradition similarly the idea of

the poet in the romantic era is not the same idea of the poet in the modern world.

Now the modern poets believe that as everything is fragmented and abstract

therefore the text or art should present in the same abstracted way too. So it can

be observed that the concept of author-function changes with time and era.

Lastly, in the ancient times the literary text supposed to provide immortality to

the author but if one considers modern writers such as Kafka or Eliot in “The

wasteland” it is observed that writer detached himself from the text. There are so

many individuals and selves in the poem wasteland that their loud voices

overpowered authors.
Foucault uses the term ‘author function’ – a concept that replaces the idea of the

author as a person, and instead refers to the ‘discourse’ that surrounds an author

or body of work. It starts with the recognition that authorship and the different

values and meanings associated with it are cultural products that vary widely

from time to time and place to place.