In “What is an Author?”, Michel Foucault looks closely into the relationship between author and text and the way in which the text points to this “figure” (101). Therefore, it seems to him that this relationship is of great importance.  To introduce the theme, he cites Beckett who states: “What does it matter who is speaking?” (101). For Foucault, this statement illustrates the ethical principles of contemporary writing or what he calls “écriture” (101).  He mentions two keys rules pertaining to contemporary writing. First, writing has freed itself from expression because it only refers to itself. He compares writing to the ways in which a game unfolds: it breaks through its own rules and creates space where the “writing subject” disappears. Second, there is a relationship between writing and death. Foucault mentions this in order to underscore the old tradition emphasized in the Greek epic or Arabian tales that seeks to prevent death and perpetuate the idea of immortality of the hero. On the other hand, Foucault explains how in western society, the tradition of perpetuating death has been totally transformed where the writer sacrifices life. Examples such as Flaubert, Proust and Kafka are all cited to show how western writers have their authors die and thus, writing as defined earlier by Foucault results in death.

Foucault then questions the idea of work. He wonders: what is a work? Isn’t it simply what an author has written? He uses the examples of the Marquis de Sade. Thanks to Wikipedia, notice that the word “sadism” is derived from his name, which should give you a hint of what kind of a writer he was. The point is that Sade was not considered to be an author due to his scandalous nature, which raises the question about the status of his work and whether or not all written forms can be considered as works. Foucault further discusses the notion of writing (écriture) and claims that writing is not concerned with the act of writing or indication but should allow us to eschew references to the author and situate his absence (104). Another issue that Foucault raises is the question of the author’s name. He cleverly point out that one cannot simply use an author’s name as a simple reference since it will bias a reader’s point of view about a specific literary work. For example, when hearing the name “Plato”, we will automatically be inclined to linking this name to one of Plato’s famous works and thus lose the specificity of the actual text we are reading.

Foucault goes on to cite four characteristic of the “author-function”. First, since discourse was originally an act that could be placed in the “bipolar field of the profane and the sacred” (108), the author-function served to punish those responsible for transgressive discourse. Second, the author does not affect all discourses universally: we tend to question the author of literary texts but not so much scientific texts. Third, there is a problem of how to attribute a particular text to an author, especially when dealing with literary texts that have not yet been attributed to an author. The danger is that readers will often construct the author according to the criteria that they find pertinent. Finally, Foucault states that the “author” doesn’t uniquely refer to a real individual, but perhaps to an alter ego and functions much more like a narrator.

For Foucault, the author is not an infinite source of meaning, but rather an ideological product that is part of a larger system of beliefs that limits and restricts meaning. Despite agreeing with Barthes that the author-function may soon disappear, he does recognize that since there will always be a system of constraint that exists, absolute freedom cannot fully be attained. But to an extent, I don’t see this as being very problematic since we need to consider authorial intention. If absolute freedom were allowed, then there would be nothing limiting what we say about a text. I don’t know if I accept that all interpretations of a text can be considered as legitimate since this would literally devalue the author entirely, which for me doesn’t seem right.