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What is an
Author?
Michel
Foucault and
the Author-
Function
Nov 22, 2010 Luke Arnott
Michel Foucault, Theorizer
of the Author-Function -
Unknown
Michel Foucault theorized
the "author-function" in
response to claims that the
actual writer of a text is no
longer important in
postmodern literature.

In his 1969 essay “What is

an Author?” French
philosopher and critic
Michel Foucault examines
the notion of the “author” in
literature, investigating the
relationship between the
author and the text.
Seeing the author as a
phenomenon that transcends
the writing subject, Foucault
finds that there are authorial
functions that have remained
despite the “disappearance”
of the modern author. He
calls this the “author-
function," a concept that
would become important in
postmodernist literary
criticism.

Does Michel Foucault

Think the "Author" is
Dead?
Foucault thinks that the idea
of the “author” of a literary
work endures despite critical
attempts to devalue it. For
instance, the influential
essay "The Death of the
Author" by Foucault's
contemporary, Roland
Barthes, argued that
criticism need only deal with
texts.
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In response, Foucault sets
out to map the relationship
between an author and the
literary text attributed to
him, in order to see how the
text points to an author-
figure that exists beyond the
text and is of a different kind
than the actual "writer."
(This is especially relevant
in the case of anonymous or
legendary writers.)
Foucault asserts that even if
a particular individual is
“accepted” as an author,
without a theory of the
"work," it is unclear what
writings of an author are to
be included in his oeuvre.
The author’s privileged
status, in being removed, is
merely shifted to the text
itself.
Characteristics of Michel
Foucault's Author-
Function
By showing how an author’s
name does not have the
same relation to an
individual that a proper
name does (it may not refer
to an identifiable individual
at all), Foucault reveals the
author’s name as a form of
classification that exists
beyond the writer and his
writing.

Read on
• Media Studies:
Schools and
Branches of the
Academic Discipline

• Λιτ ε ρ α ρ ψ
Τη ε ο ρ ψ :
Τη ε
Αυ τ η ο ρ
αν δ
 Ποσ τ ε ρ ι τ
ψ

Ποσ τ µ ο δ ε ρ ν
ισ µ αν δ
Ηισ τ ο ρ ι χ
αλ
Ρεσ ε α ρ χ η
This author-function,
“characteristic of the mode
of existence, circulation, and
functioning of certain
discourses within a society”
(179), now becomes
Foucault’s focus. He
identifies four characteristics
of the author-function:
Since discourses are
objects of
appropriation, the
author-function must
be linked to whatever
institutions of
judgment, be they
legal or simply
ethical, exist in a
society with respect
to discourse.
The author-function is
not the same
historically; over
time, different types
of texts have and
have not required
attribution to an
author.
The author-function,
instead of simply
attributing discourse
to a certain
individual, is the
result of “a complex
operation which
 constructs a certain
rational being which
we call ‘author’ ”
(180). These
operations of author-
construction, though
seeming to change in
different contexts, do
have some historical
constants. (Criteria
devised by St.
Jerome for
attributing
authorship, Foucault
demonstrates, remain
in modern literary
criticism in a
different guise.)
The author-function does
not refer to a real
individual, since it
often consists of
several, simultaneous
subjects; this is
shown to be true
whether in fiction or
in technical or
scientific writing.
Foucault proceeds to apply
the author-function more
broadly. He introduces the
idea of “transdiscursive”
authorship, that of a literary
tradition or school of
thought. Foucault identifies
nineteenth-century figures
such as Sigmund Freud and
Karl Marx as a subset of this
kind of author, whom he
calls “founders of
discursivity” (183).
Such authors inspire
discourses that are either
analogous or divergent from
their original works, yet
serve as constant
touchstones for subsequent
discourse.

Why Foucault Defines

the Author-Function
Foucault concludes “What is
an Author?” by outlining the
value, as he sees it, of
defining the author-function.
His first group of reasons are
theoretical: the author-
function might provide “an
approach to the typology of
discourse”, a way to analyze
discourse historically, and a
way to “reexamine the
privileges of the subject”
which he had mentioned
earlier (185).
The second group of reasons
are “ideological." Foucault
sees the author as a limiting
agent upon the “free
circulation, free
manipulation, the free
composition, decomposition,
and recomposition of
fiction” which he implies is
seen by others as a “great
peril” (186).
Why this anti-proprietary
stance toward fiction is
laudable, Foucault does not
say. Nevertheless, he goes so
far as to predict societal
change to an extent that the
author-function might
disappear entirely.
That this millenarian vision
has not come to pass is
evidenced by the continued
struggles over the
“ownership” of literature in
every sense. Yet Michel
Foucault's author-function,
which allows a text to have
an "author" without referring
to any specific person,
remains an important
concept in literary theory.
Source:
Michel Foucault, “What is
an Author?” Modern
Criticism and Theory, ed. D.
Lodge. NY: Longman, 2000.

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Copyright Luke Arnott.
Contact the author to obtain
permission for republication.
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Michel Foucault,
Theorizer of the
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Unknown
•

Roland Barthes
 Wrote Death of the
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Michel Foucault,
Theorizer of the
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Unknown
•

Roland Barthes
Wrote Death of the
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