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.