Response 2: Foucault's What is an Author?

First of all, I’d like to express my confusion into a question that is exactly the same as the title of this text I’m going to make a response of, what is an author? Different from Barthes’ The Death of the Author which said that the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of Author (and I wonder why the word Author is always written with capital ‘A’, does it have something to do with God?), Foucault provides a different point of view which I understand as possible relationship between the author and his works. But honestly I am still confused of this idea. Foucault gives an example of the difference between proper name and author’s name. He conveyed the idea of author’s name being more significant than proper name. If author’s name is really that important, does it mean the author defines his works? Or vice versa?

             If I were to choose between those 2 ideas, I’d say I’d go with the author defines his works. Because, when we go to a bookstore to buy some good books, we will most likely go to “Popular” section (well at least I do). We will most likely buy a book written by a famous author (because I do). The same thing goes when you are citing a book or you are confused in deciding which book is more reliable than which. You will probably choose the one written by the more famous one. Then if the idea of relationship between the author and his works can be explained this way, how is the author dead by the time he started writing? Doesn’t it mean he lives in his works as people recognize him from his writing? Besides, he points out that a work is considered a work if there is an author of it or else you cannot study the work itself.

However, Barthes’s idea of the death of the Author also makes sense to me. This idea comes from an understanding that when the Author has been found, the text is ‘explained’, and then the text will be limited, the text then will have a center of meaning, and we won’t be able to relate the text with another text. Thus, intertextuality does not exist. Barthes also said that writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin and writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost. This idea is also conveyed by Foucault who said that writing has become linked to sacrifice, even to the sacrifice of life. This is also related to the idea conveyed by Eliot which says that a poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career, resulting to artist’s continual self-sacrifice to the point where his own personality becomes extinct. However, I don’t get the idea. Doesn’t it mean his writing is emotionless? And doesn’t it mean his writing control him?

Works Cited:

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image / Music / Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977.

Elliot, T. S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent” Vol. 19, pp. 36-42, Perspecta. United States: Yale School of Architecture, 1982.

Foucault, Michael. “What Is an Author?” The Author Function: Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice. Trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977.