Foucault - Death of the Author

M. Foucault, "What is an Author?"

Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984) dealt with many aspects of social philosophy during his career, but it is his philosophy surrounding the role and dominance of the author in modern literature that this essay aims to deal with. From the 19th century onwards, Foucault notices that through social and political frameworks, the presence of an author vastly dominates the content and categorisation of any publication of that author. He also throws into question the idea of when an author becomes an author and what writings that he produces should become known as his work. The example he gives refers to items such as letters of correspondence or even simple lists that although might have been constructed by the same author of a canonical text, are not recognised as works of literature. What makes works of literature stand out is the content. Indeed, if one can recognise some basic principles of an authors works that may be used to relate previously anonymously published work, does that not disprove the existence of an original author. Foucault argues that when these common principles are identified (he himself recognises four in this essay) another could simply produce identically styled work according to these, thus rendering the author obsolete. When considering Marx or Freud who both claim in their work that an individual is only a component of the unconsciousness or political agenda, how can an author as an individual even exist? He recognises the author as a fleeting figure, only known through the "singularity of his absence and his link to death" (p.1624) and thereby questions further the role of the individual.

Firstly, one must consider the rise of the author and how the idea of the figure's importance came to be. Foucault considers Greek mythology when debating this claming that once it was the hero in such plays that was granted his immortality and the author remained largely anonymous. In the middle ages, this assumption changed as names of those who were involved in scientific discoveries were used to verify their truthfulness. Foucault states that in arguments, statements were in the order of "Hippocrates says... or Pliny tell us that....." (p.1629). This changed in the seventeenth and eighteenth century during the boom of scientific discoveries as that which was held true in scientific spheres was simply part of a greater truth. There was no need to verify the author as the facts were self evident through their existence. It was towards the end of this time however that the author's role became important once more. Literature was assigned real authors, not for the sake of vanity but in the case of those who "became subject to punishment and to the extent that his discourse was considered transgressive"(p1628). At this point it would be wise to identity what Foucault means by 'discourse' as it is a word that he uses a lot in this essay. In its simplest terms, it refers to language in relation to publications that went outside the assumptions society held true in any social or political sense. It is seeing outside the framework, if you will, of any major aspect of a society. It was only by stepping outside this did an author draw sufficient attention to himself to require identification. Ironically enough, this system of negative identification became the normality for published literature towards the end of the nineteenth century with "the emergence of ownership and strict copyright rules" (p.1628). Foucault recognises that "the transgressive properties always intrinsic to the act of writing became the forceful imperative of literature" (p.1628).

The fundamental problem with this is the inability to define what should be classed as literature. One cannot place so much emphasis on the creator over the creation. Do we class all the published works by Shakespeare as literature? If tomorrow, an unpublished work of his was discovered, would that automatically become classed as worthwhile by default? If a letter cannot have an author, just a signatory then what writings by an author can be classed as literature?

As the author's name became an intrinsic part of literature, so did the restrictions surrounding an author's work. This relates to the two different applications of an author's name - the designation and the descriptive. When there is "a modification of the designation that links the name to a person" (p.1626), it can affect the function of the name in relation to an author's work. The example Foucault gives is if it was found today that Shakespeare did not in fact write his sonnets, it would change our perceptions and even alter the value attributed to them.

"The author remains at the contours of texts - separating one from the other, defining their form, and characterising their mode of existence" (p.1628) An author's name now serves to separate different texts and define them almost independently of their actual content.

With this emphasis on the author, it becomes apparent that the authorship is a valuable, irreplaceable thing and that no other could have constructed the same works. But the system of categorisation used in itself is used by Foucault to contradict this idea. For example, if there is a clear distinction between a modern day author and an eighteenth century one, then surely some broader sense of distinction must exist. If a researcher is trying to trace the author of a piece of literature, does he not consider more than simply the name. There could be hundreds of authors with the same name so one looks outside this distinction to other factors. Foucault recognises four points of distinction that one consider. The first is "the author is defined as a standard level of quality" (p.1630) meaning that if an author is recorded as consistently of a high quality, he is less likely to have weaker, anonymous works associated with him. Secondly, "the author is defined as a certain field of conceptual or theoretical coherence" (p.1630).In other words, an author becomes defined through his discourse as that is how they become noticed within society. Accordingly anonymous works of a similar content are related to an outstanding representative of that field based on apparently consistent thought processes. Thirdly, "the author is seen as a stylistic uniformity" (p.1630) which relates to the general style of composition and language and linking author's works accordingly. And lastly,