Whilecriticaltheoristsmayquestionthe“prestigeofauthorship”and“allmanifes-tationsofauthor-ity”(Birkerts,1994,pp.158–159)—whichhelpsexplainthepredilectionforpostmodernistandeschatologicaltitlessuchasTheDeathoftheAuthor(Bar-thes,1977),WhatisanAuthor?(Foucault,1977),andTheDeathofLiterature(Kernan,1990)—thereislittledoubtthatboththesymbolicandmaterialconsequencesofauthor

What is an Author? fMichel Foucault

verningthis function is the belief that there must be - at a particular levelof an author's thought, of his conscious or unconscious desire — apoint where contradictions are resolved, where the incompatibleelements can be shown to relate to one another or to cohere arounda fundamental and originating contradiction. Fin

Assuming that we are dealing with an author, is everything hewrote and said, everything he left behind, to be included in hiswork

shall try to answer. The first thing I shall sayis that I, personally, have never used the word 'structure'. Look forit in The Order of Things and you will not find it. Therefore, I wishI could be spared all the facile criticisms on structuralism, or elsethat these could be substantiated. Moreover, I did not say that theauthor did not exist; I did not say it and I am surprised that mylecture should have led to such a misunderstanding. Let us go ove

Michel Foucault raised another problem in his lecture: that ofecriture. I think it is better to give this discussion a name, since Iexpect that we have all been thinking of Derrida and his system.We know that Derrida is attempting (a gamble which I find para-doxical) to elaborate a philosophy of writing, while at the sametime denying the existence of the subject. This is all the morecurious since this concept of writing is otherwise very close to thedialectical concept of practice. To quote but one example amongothers: I can only agree with him when he tells us that writingleaves traces which eventually efface themselves; it is the propertyof every practice, be it the construction of a temple, which dis-appears after several centuries or millenia, the opening of a road,the altering of its course or, more prosaically, the manufacture of acouple of sausages which are then eaten

can easily imagine a culture wherediscourse would circulate without any need for an author. Dis-courses, whatever their status, form, or value, and regardless of ourmanner of handling them, would unfold in a pervasive anonymity.No longer the tiresome repetitions: 'Who is the real author?' 'H

A study of Galileo's works could alter our knowledge ofthe history, but not the science, of mechanics; whereas, a re-examination of the books of Freud or Marx can transform ourunderstanding of psychoanalysis or Marxism

In keeping with this distinction, we can understand why it isinevitable that practitioners of such discourses must 'return to theorigin*.

The initiation of a discursive practice,unlike the founding of a science, overshadows and is necessarilydetached from its later developments and transformations. As aconsequence, we define the theoretical validity of a statement withrespect to the work of the initiator, whereas in the case of Galileoor Newton, it is based on the structural and intrinsic norms estab-lished in cosmology or physics. Stated schematically, the work ofthese initiators is not situated in relation to a science or in thespace it defines; rather, it is science or discursive practice thatrelate to their works as the primary points of reference.

On the other hand, the initiation of a discursive practice isheterogeneous to its ulterior transformations. To extend psycho-analytic practice, as initiated by Freud, is not to presume a formalgenerality that was not claimed at the outset; it is to explore anumber of possible applications. To limit it is to isolate in theoriginal texts a small set of propositions or statements that areirecognized as having an inaugurarive value and that mark otherFreudian concepts or theories as derivative. Fi

a scientific programme, the founding act is on an equal footingI with its future transformations: it is merely one among the manymodifications that it makes possible. This interdependence cantake several forms. In the future development of a science, thefounding act may appear as little more than a single instance of amore general phenomenon that has been discovered. It might bequestioned, in retrospect, for being too intuitive or empirical andsubmitted to the rigours of new theoretical operations in order tosituate it in a formal domain. Finally, it might be thought a hastygeneralization whose validity should be restricted. In other words,the founding act of a science can always be rechannelled through' the machinery of transformations it has instituted.

ficially,then, the initiation of discursive practices appears similar to thefounding of any scientific endeavour, but I believe there is a funda-/ mental difference

other hand, Marx and Freud, as'initiators of discursive practices', not only made possible a certainnumber of analogies that could be adopted by future texts, but,as importantly, they also made possible a certain number of dif-ferences. They cleared a space for the introduction of elementsother than their own, which, nevertheless, remain within the fieldof discourse they initiated. In saying that Freud founded psycho-analysis, we do not simply mean that the concept of libido or thetechniques of dream analysis reappear in the writings of KarlAbraham or Melanie Klein, but that he made possible a certainnumber of differences with respect to his books, concepts, andhypotheses, which all arise out of psychoanalytic discourse.

The distinctive contribution of these authors is that they pro-duced not only their own work, but the possibility and the rulesof formation of other texts. In this sense, their role differs entirelyfrom that of a novelist, for example, who is basically never morethan the author of his own text. Freud is not simply the author ofThe Interpretation of Dreams or of Wit and its Relation to theUnconscious and Marx is not simply the author of the CommunistManifesto or Capital: they both established the endless possibilityof discourse. Obviously, an easy objection can be made. The authorof a novel may be responsible for more than his own text; if heacquires some 'importance' in the literary world, his influence canhave significant ramifications. To take a very simple example, onecould say that Ann Radcliffe did not simply write The Mysteriesof Udolpho and a few other novels, but also made possible theappearance of Gothic Romances at the beginning of the nine-teenth century. To this extent, her function as an author exceedsthe limits of her work. However, this objection can be answeredby the fact that the possibilities disclosed by the initiators of dis-cursive practices (using the examples of Marx and Freud, whomI believe to be the first and the most important) are significantlydifferent from those suggested by novelists. The novels of AnnRadcliffe put into circulation a certain number of resemblances andanalogies patterned on her work - various characteristic signs,figures, relationships, and structures that could be integrated intoother books. In short, to say that Ann Radcliffe created the GothicRomance means that there are certain elements common to herworks and to the nineteenth-century Gothic romance: the heroineruined by her own innocence, the secret fortress that functions as

I believe that the nineteenth century in Europe produced asingular type of author who should not be confused with 'great'literary authors, or the authors of canonical religious texts, andthe founders of sciences. Somewhat arbitrarily, we might call them'initiators of discursive practices'.

However, it is obvious that even within the realm ofdiscourse a person can be the author of much more than a book -of a theory, for instance, of a tradition or a discipline within whichnew books and authors can proliferate. For convenience, we couldsay that such authors occupy a 'transdiscursive' position.

author-function' is tiedto the legal and institutional systems that circumscribe, determine,and articulate the realm of discourses; it does not operate in auniform manner in all discourses, at all times, and in any givenculture; it is not defined by the spontaneous attribution of a textto its creator, but through a series of precise and complex pro-cedures; it does not refer, purely and simply, to an actual individualinsofar as it simultaneously gives rise to a variety of egos and to aseries of subjective positions that individuals of any class may

athe-matical treatise, the ego who indicates the circumstances of com-position in the preface is not identical, either in terms of his posi-tion or his function, to the T who concludes a demonstrationwithin the body of the text. The former implies a unique individualwho, at a given time and place, succeeded in completing a project,whereas the latter indicates an instance and plan of demonstrationthat anyone could perform provided the same set of axioms, pre-liminary operations, and an identical set of symbols were used. It isalso possible to locate a third ego: one who speaks of the goals of' his investigation, the obstacles encountered, its results, and theproblems yet to be solved and this T would function in a field ofexisting or future mathematical discourses. We are not dealing witha system of dependencies where a first and essential use of the Tis reduplicated, as a kind of fiction, by the other two. On thecontrary, the 'author-function' in such discourses operates so as toeffect the simultaneous dispersion of the three egos

ight object that thisphenomenon only applies to novels or poetry, to a context of 'quasi-discourse', but, in fact, all discourse that supports this 'author-function' is characterized by the plurality of egos. In a

ave a different bearing on texts with an author and 23on those without one. In the latter, these 'shifters' refer to a realspeaker and to an actual deictic situation, with certain exceptionssuch as the case of indirect speech in the first person. When dis-course is linked to an author, however, the role of 'shifters' is morecomplex and variable. It is well known that in a novel narrated inthe first person, neither the first person pronoun, the presentindicative tense, nor, for that matter, its signs of localization referdirectly to the %vriter, either to the time when he wrote, or to thespecific act of writing; rather, they stand for a 'second self whosesimilarity to the author is never fixed and undergoes considerablealteration within the course of a single book. It

ccording to Saint Jerome, there are four criteria:the texts that must be eliminated from the list of works attributedto a single author are those inferior to the others (thus, the authoris defined as a standard level of quality); those whose ideas conflictwith the doctrine expressed in the others( here the author is definedas a certain field of conceptual or theoretical coherence); thosewritten in a different style and containing words and phrases notordinarily found in the other works (the author is seen as a stylisticuniformity); and those referring to events of historical figures sub-sequent to the death of the author (the author is thus a definitehistorical figure in which a series of events converge). Alth

alue of a text by ascertaining the holiness of its author. In

In literary criticism, for example, the traditional methods fordefining an author - or, rather, for determining the configurationof the author from existing texts - derive in large part from thoseused in the Christian tradition to authenticate (or to reject) theparticular texts in its possession. Modern criticism, in its desireto 'recover' the author from a work, employs devices stronglyreminiscent of Christian exegesis w

There are, nevertheless, transhistorical constants in therules that govern the construction of an author.

In addition, all these operations vary according to the periodand the form of discourse concerned. A 'philosopher' and a 'poet'are not constructed in the same manner; and the author of aneighteenth-century novel was formed differently from the modernnovelist.

The third point concerning this 'author-function' is that it is notformed spontaneously through the simple attribution of a discourseto an individual. It results from a complex operation whose pur-pose is to construct the rational entity we call an author. Un-doubtedly, this construction is assigned a 'realistic' dimension aswe speak of an individual's 'profundity' or 'creative' power, hisintentions or the original inspiration manifested in writing. Never-theless, these aspects of an individual, which we designate as anauthor (or which comprise an individual as an author), are pro-jections, in terms always more or less psychological, of our way ofhandling texts: in the comparisons we make, the traits we extractas pertinent, the continuities we assign, or the exclusions we prac-tise.

At the same time, however, 'literary' discourse was acceptableonly if it carried an author's name; every text of poetry or fictionwas obliged to state its author and the date, place and circumstanceof its writing. The meaning and value attributed to the text de-pended on this information. If by accident or design a text waspresented anonymously, every effort was made to locate its author.Literary anonymity was of interest only as a puzzle to be solved as,in our day, literary works are totally dominated by the sovereigntyof the author. (

the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, a totally new conception was developed whenscientific texts were accepted on their own merits and positionedwithin an anonymous and coherent conceptual system of estab-lished truths and methods of verification. Authentification no longerrequired reference to the individual who had produced them; therole of the author disappeared as an index of truthfulness and,where it remained as an inventor's name, it was merely to denot

exts, however, that we now call 'scien-tific' (dealing with cosmology and the heavens, medicine or illness,the natural sciences or geography) were only considered truthfulduring the Middle Ages if the name of the author was indicated.Statements on the order of 'Hippocrates said ..." or 'Pliny tellsus that . . .' were not merely formulas for an argument based onauthority, they marked a proven discourse. In the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, a totally new conception was developed whenscientific texts were accepted on their own merits and positionedwithin an anonymous and coherent conceptual system of estab-lished truths and methods of verification. Authentification no longerrequired reference to the individual who had produced them; therole of the author disappeared as an index of truthfulness and,where it remained as an inventor's name, it was merely to denote

Secondly, the 'author-function' is not universal or constant in alldiscourse. Even within our civilization, the same types of textshave not always required authors; there was a time when thosetexts which we now call 'literary' (stories, folk tales, epics, andtragedies) were accepted, circulated, and valorized without anyquestion about the identity of their author. Their anonymity wasignored because their real or supposed age was a sufficient guaran-tee of their authenticity. T

First, they are objects of appropriation; the form of propertythey have become is of a particular type whose legal codificationwas accomplished some years ago. It is important to notice, aswell, that its status as property is historically secondary to thepenal code controlling its appropriation. Speeches and books wereassigned real authors, other than mythical or important religiousfigures, only when the author became subject to punishment andto the extent that his discourse was considered transgressive. Inour culture - undoubtedly in others as well - discourse was notoriginally a thing, a product, or a possession, but an action situatedin a bipolar field of sacred and profane, lawful and unlawful, reli-gious and blasphemous. It was a gesture charged with risks longbefore it became a possession caught in a circuit of property values.But it was at the moment when a system of ownership and strictcopyright rules were established (toward the end of the eighteenthand beginning of the nineteenth century) that the transgressiveproperties always intrinsic to the act of writing became the force-ful imperative of literature. It is as if the author, at the momenthe was accepted into the social order of property which governsour culture, was compensating for this new status by revivingthe older bipolar field of discourse in a systematic practice of trans-gression and by restoring the danger of writing which, on anotherside, had been conferred the benefits of property

nsequently, we cansay that in our culture, the name of an author is a variable thataccompanies only certain texts to the exclusion of others: a privateletter may have a signatory, but it does not have an author; acontract can have an underwriter, but not an author; and, similarlyan anonymous poster attached to a wall may have a writer, buthe cannot be an author. In this sense, the function of an author isto characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certaindiscourses within a society

We can conclude that, unlike a proper name, which moves fromthe interior of a discourse to the real person outside who producedit, the name of the author remains at the contours of texts -separating one from the other, defining their form, and character-izing their mode of existence. It points to the existence of certaingroups of discourse and refers to the status of this discourse withina society and culture. The author's name is not a function of aman's civil status, nor is it fictional; it is situated in the breach,among the discontinuities, which gives rise to new groups of dis-course and their singular mode of existence. C

To learn, for example, that Pierre Dupont does not have blueeyes, does not live in Paris, and is not a doctor does not invalidatethe fact that the name, Pierre Dupont, continues to refer to thesame person; there has been no modification of the designation thatlinks the name to the person. With the name of an author, how-ever, the problems are far more complex. The disclosure thatShakespeare was not born in the house that tourists now visitwould not modify the functioning of the author's name, but if itwere proved that he had not written the sonnets that we attributeto him, this would constitute a significant change and affect themanner in which the author's name functions. Moreover, if weestablish that Shakespeare wrote Bacon's Organon and that thesame author was responsible for both the works of Shakespeareand those of Bacon, we would have introduced a third type ofalteration which completely modifies the functioning of the author'sname. Consequently, the name of an author is not precisely a propername among others

The name of an author poses all the problems related to thecategory of the proper name. (Here, I am referring to the work ofJohn Searle,3 among others.) Obviously not a pure and simplereference, the proper name (and the author's name as well) hasother than indicative functions. It is more than a gesture, a fingerpointed at someone; it is, to a certain extent, the equivalent of adescription. When we say 'Aristotle', we are using a word thatmeans one or a series of definite descriptions of the type: 'theauthor of the Analytics', or 'the founder of ontology', and so forth.Furthermore, a proper name has other functions than that of sig-nification: when we discover that Rimbaud has not written LaChasse spirituelle, we cannot maintain that the meaning of theproper name or this author's name has been altered. The propername and the name of an author oscillate between the poles ofdescription and designation, and, granting that they are linked towhat they name, they are not totally determined either by theirdescriptive or designative functions. Yet - and it is here that thespecific difficulties attending an author's name appear - the linkbetween a proper name and the individual being named and the linkbetween an author's name and that which it names are not iso-morphous and do not function in the same way; and these dif-ferences require clarification.

It is obviously insufficient to repeat empty slogans: the authorhas disappeared; God and man died a common death. Rather, weshould re-examine the empty space left by the author's disappear-ance, we should attentively observe, along its gaps and fault lines,its new demarcations, and the reapportionment of this void; weshould await the fluid functions released by this disappearance.In this context we can briefly consider the problems that ari

Another thesis has detained us from taking full measure of the 17author's disappearance. It avoids confronting the specific event thatmakes it possible and, in subtle ways, continues to preserve theexistence of the author. This is the notion of icriture. Strictlyspeaking,.it should allow us not only to circumvent references toan author, but to situate his recent absence. The conception oficriture, as currently employed, is concerned with neither the actof writing nor the indications, as symptoms or signs within a text,of an author's meaning; rather, it stands for a remarkably profoundattempt to elaborate the conditions of any text, both the conditionsof its spatial dispersion and its temporal deployment

his problem is both theoretical and practical. If we wishto publish the complete works of Nietzsche, for example, where dowe draw the line? Certainly, everything must be published, but canwe agree on what 'everything' means? We will, of course, includeeverything that Nietzsche himself published, along with the draftsof his works, his plans for aphorisms, his marginal notations andcorrections. But what if, in a notebook filled with aphorisms, wefind a reference, a reminder of an appointment, an address, or alaundry bill, should this be included in his works? Why not? T

t,what of a context that questions the concept of a work? What, inshort, is the strange unit designated by the term, work? What isnecessary to its composition, if a work is not something writtenby a person called an 'author'? Difficulties arise on all sides if weraise the question in this way. If an individual is not an author,what are we to make of those things he has written or said, leftamong his papers or communicated to others? Is this not properlya work?

as been under-stood that the task of criticism is not to re-establish the ties betweenan author and his work or to reconstitute an author's thought andexperience through his works and, further, that criticism shouldconcern itself with the structures of a work, its architectonic forms,which are studied for their intrinsic and internal relationships. Y

his conception of aspoken or written narrative as a protection against death has beentransformed by our culture. Writing is now linked to sacrifice and tothe sacrifice of life itself; it is a voluntary obliteration of the selfthat does not require representation in books because it takes placein the everyday existence of the writer. Where a work had the dutyof creating immortality, it now attains the right to kill, to becomethe murderer of its author. Flaubert, Proust, and Kafka are obviousexamples of this reversal. In addition, we find the link betweenwriting and death manifested in the total effacement of the indi-vidual characteristics of the writer;

Beckett supplies a direction: 'What matter who's sp

For the purposes of this paper, I will set aside a sociohistoricalanalysis of the author as an individual and the numerous ques-tions that deserve attention in this context; how the author wasindividualized in a culture such as ours; the status we have giventhe author, for instance, when we began our research into authen-ticity and attribution; the systems of valorization in which he wasincluded; or the moment when the stories of heroes gave way toan author's biography; the conditions that fostered the formula-tion of the fundamental critical category of 'the man and his work'

en now, when we studythe history of a concept, a literary genre, or a branch of philo-sophy, these concerns assume a relatively weak and secondaryposition in relation to the solid and fundamental role of an authorand his works

hese questionshave determined my effort to situate comprehensive discursiveunits, such as 'natural history' or 'political economy', and to estab-lish the methods and instruments for delimiting, analysing, anddescribing these unities.

my objective in The Order of Things1 had been toanalyse verbal clusters as discursive layers which fall outside thefamiliar categories of a book, a work, or an author. But while Iconsidered 'natural history', the 'analysis of wealth', and 'politicaleconomy' in general terms, I neglected a similar analysis of theauthor and his works; it is perhaps due to this omission that Iemployed the names of authors throughout this book in a naiveand often crude fashion. I spoke of Buffon, Cuvier, Ricardo, andothers as well, but failed to realize that I had allowed their namesto function ambiguously. This

t "[ilf Northrop Frye should write an essay attacking archetypal criticism, the article would by definition be of much greater significance than an article by another scholar attack- ing the same approach" (Schaefer 5). The reason, of course, is that the approach is not something in- dependent of what Northrop Frye has previously said about it; indeed, in large part archetypal criticism is what Northrop Frye has said about it, and therefore anything he now says about it is not so much to be measured against an independent truth as it is to be regarded, at least potentially, as a new pronouncement of what the truth will hereafter be said to be