What’s an author?–Michel Foucault
Different from Death of The Author of Roland Barthes who believes the reader, not the author, creates the meaning of a text, the very idea of an author is a fiction invented by the reader, Foucault analyzed the notion and the function of an author from an entirely different viewpoint.
Foucault limited the subject of “author” in this article, he admitted that he would only talk about “author” in the domain of discourse, but this topic is still immense—more than the literature, a theory, discipline, or tradition could all be included. There always exist a certain number of signs referring to the author. The inevitable discussion about the relationship between the author and his work indicates the importance of the author should be emphasized. A work could be called as “work” because it is created by a person who is accepted as “author”, all the same time, a work should be distinguished clearly from other written records by the author, like his memo or shopping list.
Foucault started from this phrase “What does it matter who is speaking”, this indifference is an immanent characteristic of contemporary writing, which is nowadays not limited to the dimension of expressions. The rules and limits of writing are not that important, the space created by writing is the essence. As for the relationship between writing and death, this point reminds me of the debate between Derrida and Searle—writing is a means of perpetuating thoughts and signs in the absence of the receiver and the writer, the iterability and the permanence are inherent characteristics of writing. Writing could be immortal linked to sacrifice, then the author will be “killed”, the existence of author’s individuality will be effaced.
I take the function of the author’s name as a part of author-function. Foucault believes a proper name is not only a pure or simple reference as an indication of someone, it has other indicative functions—the equivalent of a description. I agree with this argument, the author should be the one of a series of descriptions, but name is not the only signifier to the identity of an author, there may exist other people who have the same name; or the author can use a penname instead of his real name. As to me, name is important but not without limitations. Sometimes, author’s name makes things complex. However, the connection between the work and the author—this particular person—is not negligible. The work and the author’s name have a mutual influence on each other: if a discourse has an author’s name, a certain status of this discourse is hence established, this discourse is differentiated from ordinary everyday speech; a popular work makes his author famous; the work of a famous author is more well-known than most of other anonymous writings. This reminds me another example: last month, a Chinese writer Mo Yan won Nobel Award in Literature, his dull works written years ago were dug out and become popular, even some commodities rushed on to the front to register “Mo Yan” as the trademark. The name’s social function enlarges because of the fame effect.
About one of the four characteristics of the author function which I think is the most important one—it does not affect all discourses in the same way at all times and in all types of civilization, the author function is not always constant or universal. The dependability of the existence of the work’s author is variable, people are used to accept a work with the inventor’s name, especially for the literary discourses, but it’s not that important in the scientific sphere, author’s name is just a demonstration of their authenticity.
The author function is not just limited to his work. Foucault indicated Max and Freud as the example in the following part of the article. They are the creator or initiator of a theory or a literary analysis, they bring a variety of possibilities. Here, I’d like to mention “intertextuality”, a typical case for this argument. Freud’s theory could be cited as reference in other author’s work; a number of critical approaches to literature draw inspiration from the social and economic theories of Karl Marx, Marxism is propagated and applied in many countries. From this reason they could be called “founders of discursivity”, because they produce the possibilities of differences and the rules for the formation of other texts and theories. The “return to the origin” of the discourse could avoid the subsequent formal or theoretical transformations, at the same time, this “return” reinforces the connection between the author and the work.
After all these arguments about author-function, at last, Foucault stated again “what difference does it make who is speaking?” to illustrate the possibility of anonymity, “it does not seem necessary that the author function remain constant in form, complexity and even in existence.” (119). It’s interesting to notice this point, it is not contradictory, as to me, it is a good way to corroborate his own argument: Foucault—the author of What Is an Author put forward other possibilities for relevant or even disputable opinions and arguments on his work.
What’s an author?–Michel Foucault
Different from Death of The Author of Roland Barthes who believes the reader, not the author, creates the meaning of a text, the very idea of an author is a fiction invented by the reader, Foucault analyzed the notion and the function of an author from an entirely different viewpoint.
Foucault limited the subject of “author” in this article, he admitted that he would only talk about “author” in the domain of discourse, but this topic is still immense—more than the literature, a theory, discipline, or tradition could all be included. There always exist a certain number of signs referring to the author. The inevitable discussion about the relationship between the author and his work indicates the importance of the author should be emphasized. A work could be called as “work” because it is created by a person who is accepted as “author”, all the same time, a work should be distinguished clearly from other written records by the author, like his memo or shopping list.
Foucault started from this phrase “What does it matter who is speaking”, this indifference is an immanent characteristic of contemporary writing, which is nowadays not limited to the dimension of expressions. The rules and limits of writing are not that important, the space created by writing is the essence. As for the relationship between writing and death, this point reminds me of the debate between Derrida and Searle—writing is a means of perpetuating thoughts and signs in the absence of the receiver and the writer, the iterability and the permanence are inherent characteristics of writing. Writing could be immortal linked to sacrifice, then the author will be “killed”, the existence of author’s individuality will be effaced.
I take the function of the author’s name as a part of author-function. Foucault believes a proper name is not only a pure or simple reference as an indication of someone, it has other indicative functions—the equivalent of a description. I agree with this argument, the author should be the one of a series of descriptions, but name is not the only signifier to the identity of an author, there may exist other people who have the same name; or the author can use a penname instead of his real name. As to me, name is important but not without limitations. Sometimes, author’s name makes things complex. However, the connection between the work and the author—this particular person—is not negligible. The work and the author’s name have a mutual influence on each other: if a discourse has an author’s name, a certain status of this discourse is hence established, this discourse is differentiated from ordinary everyday speech; a popular work makes his author famous; the work of a famous author is more well-known than most of other anonymous writings. This reminds me another example: last month, a Chinese writer Mo Yan won Nobel Award in Literature, his dull works written years ago were dug out and become popular, even some commodities rushed on to the front to register “Mo Yan” as the trademark. The name’s social function enlarges because of the fame effect.
About one of the four characteristics of the author function which I think is the most important one—it does not affect all discourses in the same way at all times and in all types of civilization, the author function is not always constant or universal. The dependability of the existence of the work’s author is variable, people are used to accept a work with the inventor’s name, especially for the literary discourses, but it’s not that important in the scientific sphere, author’s name is just a demonstration of their authenticity.
The author function is not just limited to his work. Foucault indicated Max and Freud as the example in the following part of the article. They are the creator or initiator of a theory or a literary analysis, they bring a variety of possibilities. Here, I’d like to mention “intertextuality”, a typical case for this argument. Freud’s theory could be cited as reference in other author’s work; a number of critical approaches to literature draw inspiration from the social and economic theories of Karl Marx, Marxism is propagated and applied in many countries. From this reason they could be called “founders of discursivity”, because they produce the possibilities of differences and the rules for the formation of other texts and theories. The “return to the origin” of the discourse could avoid the subsequent formal or theoretical transformations, at the same time, this “return” reinforces the connection between the author and the work.
After all these arguments about author-function, at last, Foucault stated again “what difference does it make who is speaking?” to illustrate the possibility of anonymity, “it does not seem necessary that the author function remain constant in form, complexity and even in existence.” (119). It’s interesting to notice this point, it is not contradictory, as to me, it is a good way to corroborate his own argument: Foucault—the author of What Is an Author put forward other possibilities for relevant or even disputable opinions and arguments on his work.
A Good Man is Hard to FInd
A Good Man is Hard to Find is a short-story that manages to put together humor, shock and morals all in one tale which makes up for a pretty amusing reading experience.
There were a couple of aspects that caught my attention, the one has to do with gender representation (last week’s readings sure affected me) I found interesting that of the three female characters that were part of the family – I assume it’s three but maybe it’s four, considering we don’t know the baby’s sex- only one of them has a name, June Star, who is a kid. The other two adult woman characters grandmother and the wife are referred to just like that. And outside the family we have of course Red Sammy’s wife. I don’t think this is a coincidence considering that every other character has a name- even the cat- and some are pretty elaborate and representative of the southern culture of the United States. However, I don’t quite know what to make of it. It may have something to do with religion, bearing in mind the moralizing theme of the story and that in the end it was a woman, the grandmother, who brought tragedy to the family… like the original sinner. Or is it just a reflection on women stereotyping? That is, the woman without individuality, only existing in relation to a man or to her family.
The title A Good Man is Hard to Find, (Isn’t there a jazz song with that name?) seems ironic when the character that appears as most worried about the crooked path that society has taken and the difficulty to find “a good man” is the grandmother; a woman who is the perfect example of everything that’s wrong with society. She is vain, selfish, manipulative, uses her condition of “lady” to try to get away from trouble… A good man is hard to find but finding a good woman is equally as hard. The fact is that there are no real notions of what a good person is as it changes with time, apparently the older generations are always better than the newer. But since when has this been happening? How far back in time should we go in order to find the original good man? Is the original good man Jesus, the man that died for our sins? Is he the father The Misfit killed? And for that matter isn’t he the father that we all killed? Within this frame of thought, it appears to me that The Misfit’s final remark “there is no pleasure in life” comes from the religious idea that we are all born guilty of a crime for which we will be punished if we decide not to acknowledge it, and acknowledging it means to follow the religious path blindly, if not, everything you do will be mean, an offense. And whichever path one chooses to take will end in the same pleasure empty life. But as The Misfit says, we cannot know for sure that we are guilty of this crime and that’s what’s maddening.
In the end the grandmother or any other character isn’t too different from The Misfit, she lives with the same doubts as he does only she is not conscious of them. It is only at the end of her life when she realizes that they are both the same.
A good man is hard to find
Good Man Is Hard to Find
This is a short story written by Flannery O’connor, when I read this story I had a hard time trying to find the meaning to it as a whole. The main character of the story is the grandmother who has a lot of premonitions since she doesn’t want to go to Florida but instead Tennessee because there is a killer on the loose, she mentions to her son Bailey that if she was him she would not take her children to where the killer is because “she couldn’t answer to her conscious”. This is Ironic since is she who takes them to a back road, it’s her cat who scares the driver (son) and she is the one that recognizes the killer which really ends and chance of him letting them go. This character the grandmother nags a lot she wants things done her way and complains when they are not. In a way she has a very childlike personality and in Irony the children John Wesley and June Star, are very adult like. The killer is an interesting character especially the fact that he does not remember the fact that he committed crimes. In a way it represents our difficulty in accepting when we do bad things he is very much ambiguous to his badness and crimes. He is not in denial because he does accept committing the crimes he says “It wasn’t a mistake. They had the papers on me”; so he accepts what he did he just can’t recall it. In the story the son and his wife have a very dark quiet position, they hardly speak but you sense their hatred towards the grandmother or maybe it’s just a reflection of the reader’s dislike of the grandmother. (I really didn’t like the character) At the end of the story the killer kills the whole family but the last one he kills is the grandmother, here you have a lot of religious reference, and you also have background of the killer he mentions he used to be a gospel singer but ended up a killer, the story in a way is saying that any of us can be the killer because we can all become bad, the is a point in the story where the grandmother says “you can be my son” so he is anybody really but with the difference that he has become bad. I think writer does a really good job with the characters but with the plot there is not much.
A good man is hard to find
Good Man Is Hard to Find
This is a short story written by Flannery O’connor, when I read this story I had a hard time trying to find the meaning to it as a whole. The main character of the story is the grandmother who has a lot of premonitions since she doesn’t want to go to Florida but instead Tennessee because there is a killer on the loose, she mentions to her son Bailey that if she was him she would not take her children to where the killer is because “she couldn’t answer to her conscious”. This is Ironic since is she who takes them to a back road, it’s her cat who scares the driver (son) and she is the one that recognizes the killer which really ends and chance of him letting them go. This character the grandmother nags a lot she wants things done her way and complains when they are not. In a way she has a very childlike personality and in Irony the children John Wesley and June Star, are very adult like. The killer is an interesting character especially the fact that he does not remember the fact that he committed crimes. In a way it represents our difficulty in accepting when we do bad things he is very much ambiguous to his badness and crimes. He is not in denial because he does accept committing the crimes he says “It wasn’t a mistake. They had the papers on me”; so he accepts what he did he just can’t recall it. In the story the son and his wife have a very dark quiet position, they hardly speak but you sense their hatred towards the grandmother or maybe it’s just a reflection of the reader’s dislike of the grandmother. (I really didn’t like the character) At the end of the story the killer kills the whole family but the last one he kills is the grandmother, here you have a lot of religious reference, and you also have background of the killer he mentions he used to be a gospel singer but ended up a killer, the story in a way is saying that any of us can be the killer because we can all become bad, the is a point in the story where the grandmother says “you can be my son” so he is anybody really but with the difference that he has become bad. I think writer does a really good job with the characters but with the plot there is not much.
Hooks Paris is Burning
Paris is Burning by Bell Hooks
When I first saw the movie in which this paper is written on, I had a deep sense of melancholy. Maybe because I had heard that the film was about African American drag queen in the states, and the idea of what I thought the film was like was really different to what t film was really like. I think two main things that the film brings out is the difference in race and the difference in class. The article brings out that the film shows “the way in which colonized black (in this case black gay brothers, some of whom were drag queens) worshiped at the throne of whiteness, even when such worship demands that we live in perpetual self-hate, steal, lie, go hungry, and even die in its pursuit.” (149) you can see this clearly in the film were people are constantly talking about money and how money would help them change not just their situation but also their body. The most dramatic example is when they mentioned that one of the girls interviewed Venus was killed. The article talks about how this moment is minimized and just stated there really is no time to mourn in the video, and that is what makes it sadder because in real life many of the people in this situation are killed and society really just overlooks it. I think the film tries to bring out a sense of community in the video when they do the “balls”, but really it’s just a way to castaway these people from the main stream society, it’s as if they were living in a fake version of what is real. In the article Hooks says clearly that he did not like thefilm in any way, but what I did find positive is that the film does a good job of showing the hopes and dreams these people have and how most don’t fulfill them but instead are always stuck in the world depicted in the film, you can especially see this when referring to the older drag queens who in a way have lost hope. In general in the end of the film as an observer you really don’t feel closure, there is something missing there is no resolution no prospect for the future and I really think this is what gives the movie such a sense of sadness and hopelessness.
Hooks Paris is Burning
Paris is Burning by Bell Hooks
When I first saw the movie in which this paper is written on, I had a deep sense of melancholy. Maybe because I had heard that the film was about African American drag queen in the states, and the idea of what I thought the film was like was really different to what t film was really like. I think two main things that the film brings out is the difference in race and the difference in class. The article brings out that the film shows “the way in which colonized black (in this case black gay brothers, some of whom were drag queens) worshiped at the throne of whiteness, even when such worship demands that we live in perpetual self-hate, steal, lie, go hungry, and even die in its pursuit.” (149) you can see this clearly in the film were people are constantly talking about money and how money would help them change not just their situation but also their body. The most dramatic example is when they mentioned that one of the girls interviewed Venus was killed. The article talks about how this moment is minimized and just stated there really is no time to mourn in the video, and that is what makes it sadder because in real life many of the people in this situation are killed and society really just overlooks it. I think the film tries to bring out a sense of community in the video when they do the “balls”, but really it’s just a way to castaway these people from the main stream society, it’s as if they were living in a fake version of what is real. In the article Hooks says clearly that he did not like thefilm in any way, but what I did find positive is that the film does a good job of showing the hopes and dreams these people have and how most don’t fulfill them but instead are always stuck in the world depicted in the film, you can especially see this when referring to the older drag queens who in a way have lost hope. In general in the end of the film as an observer you really don’t feel closure, there is something missing there is no resolution no prospect for the future and I really think this is what gives the movie such a sense of sadness and hopelessness.
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
In the middle of my reading I made a pause and thought about two things. First, I hated the grandmother. Second, I was wondering what was going to write about. For that moment, I only could say “I like it”, but nothing else. Then, I finished the story and sadly my first impression was not that different (I hated the grandma a little bit less). I didn’t know what to write about this very particular story. Lets start with the title. Didn’t tell me much about the story. Actually, at the beginning I thought that may be was a kind of love story. Of course, after the first paragraph I realized that I was wrong.
Maybe I could start with all the things that there are not in the story and I was guessing why them were not there. First of all the location. We know where this particularly “family” will go, but we don’t know where are them at the initial moment. Where are they at the very beginning of the story? Why are they moving? Why Bailey does wants to go to Florida and doesn’t hear to his mom? (I’m not saying that he should, but he never says why he doesn’t want to go to Tennesse) Also, we don’t know where do they have the accident (if it was a real accident, I have some doubts about it). Another thing that don’t appear in the story are some names. Especially, woman’s names. The two adult woman are only named by their relation to their sons/daughter. One, is “the grandmother” and the other one is “The children’s mother”. This character doesn’t speak more than 10 words in the whole story.
In this ocean of things that are-not-there, there is someone that is there every time, the grandmother. She is that kind of character made to be hated, in some way. At least, I hated her. She put them in the situation. She lied about the panel of the house in order to make the “uneducated” kids to ask to see the house. She knew that them will behave like that when she said that. And when she realize that she was wrong, that the house was not there, she didn’t say anything. After she was killed Misfit said: “She would be a good woman (…) if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (133). It is hard to find a good man. But also, I think we can read “man” as “man and women”. Where some “good” character in the story?
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
In the middle of my reading I made a pause and thought about two things. First, I hated the grandmother. Second, I was wondering what was going to write about. For that moment, I only could say “I like it”, but nothing else. Then, I finished the story and sadly my first impression was not that different (I hated the grandma a little bit less). I didn’t know what to write about this very particular story. Lets start with the title. Didn’t tell me much about the story. Actually, at the beginning I thought that may be was a kind of love story. Of course, after the first paragraph I realized that I was wrong.
Maybe I could start with all the things that there are not in the story and I was guessing why them were not there. First of all the location. We know where this particularly “family” will go, but we don’t know where are them at the initial moment. Where are they at the very beginning of the story? Why are they moving? Why Bailey does wants to go to Florida and doesn’t hear to his mom? (I’m not saying that he should, but he never says why he doesn’t want to go to Tennesse) Also, we don’t know where do they have the accident (if it was a real accident, I have some doubts about it). Another thing that don’t appear in the story are some names. Especially, woman’s names. The two adult woman are only named by their relation to their sons/daughter. One, is “the grandmother” and the other one is “The children’s mother”. This character doesn’t speak more than 10 words in the whole story.
In this ocean of things that are-not-there, there is someone that is there every time, the grandmother. She is that kind of character made to be hated, in some way. At least, I hated her. She put them in the situation. She lied about the panel of the house in order to make the “uneducated” kids to ask to see the house. She knew that them will behave like that when she said that. And when she realize that she was wrong, that the house was not there, she didn’t say anything. After she was killed Misfit said: “She would be a good woman (…) if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (133). It is hard to find a good man. But also, I think we can read “man” as “man and women”. Where some “good” character in the story?
Does good exist?
What is good? Does it exist?
At first, I thought that Flannery O’Conner’s short story A Good Man Is Hard to Find was about decadence; decadence of a region of the United States, of the whole country, of a society, of a religion. I had thought the grandmother was a noble being, and that she was hated, that she was treated like a pest, by the new generations, the young, her own son and grandchildren. I saw the young as leaving behind, as disposing of the values, as destroying the heritage that was what made a good society, family, and individual people of them. The tittle of the story resonated very much with most of the male characters that in some way or another can be considered as ‘not good’; this bringing questions of gender critique into discussion. The son is not good because he doesn’t treat his mother with respect and neither does the grandson; there are the two individuals that con the gasman, and, of course, there is The Misfit and his gang. The gasman is interesting because he thinks that by saying that a good man is hard to find, that he is a good man; that because he got conned he is a good man; because he is a veteran he is a good man; because he is aligned with the grandmother and her time, her generation, her values, maybe even her class, he is a good man. So, a ‘good man’ is hard to find in these decadent days; these decadent days where there is no longer any pride for your land, for your state, or for your country. Even the language of the story is ordinary; it is decadent.
But then I read the story again. The discussion about Jesus, the ending, and the definition for the Misfit’s name made me rethink if there actually was a critique of new society, a love for The South, and discourse of decadence. The Misfit throws everything in this southern United States cosmos, and national cosmos overall, off balance. He says of his name, “I call myself The Misfit because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment.” This here alone proposes that there never has been any justification for the amount of punishment that he has gone through given the ‘crimes’ he had committed, if he had committed any crimes at all. He creates his name so he can have a signature, so he can have ‘his papers’, which are his proof. (Note: he does not create his name to describe himself as a Misfit of society.) He had been accused of killing his father but he says he doesn’t remember doing it; implying that he originally was innocent. But ‘they’ had the papers; and they never showed them to him. This leads to another one of his explanations. He says that if Jesus raised the dead then there would be nothing but to follow him. This brings the holy scripture (or holy papers for the purpose of this story), the bible, into reference for good subsequent behavior by man. Then he says that if he did not raise the dead then then one should go on killing and committing other aggressions. This moment now is crucial, when the grandmother says that maybe Jesus didn’t raise the dead. (We should note that authorship and truth are put into question here. The Misfit says he wasn’t there to see if Jesus did raise the dead, that he cannot trust a paper to be telling the truth, just as the papers they had on him were not telling the truth. He has his signature that he will leave at the scene of the crimes he committed; so that he is not over punished if he gets caught.) This moment was the turning point in the unraveling of my initial reading. This raises some questions: How can you find a good man if good never existed? How can a society be in decadence if it never was in an ascent? Where are you going to find good where only evil has existed? How can you define ‘good’ in this atmosphere? Truth is separated from non-truth. The grandmother’s subsequent change in attitude towards the Misfit, when she says that he is one of her children, illustrates her realization that her imagination of the past, her religiously preconceived notions of ‘good’ and what society is, are shattered. She sees the truth of life, of her country, of her state. The fiction clashes with the reality. There is a breaking of the simulacrum, the hyper-real that is trying to be lived. The old are no different than the new.
The grandma portrays a character that is trying to maintaining a benevolent imaginary of the past, of the past that maintained certain relations of property, a conservative fiction (the expression ‘the gold old times’ could be remembered here), but that conflict with the new situation, the new times. The old relations of property in this context (let’s remember her dream of the plantation which in itself is reference to slavery and ownership of Africans) denote many situations which were beneficial to that imaginary, that upheld certain values that indeed were, at the very least, questionable.
It turns out that the grandma is not a very good person; that her values are not very good or they were wrong. Let’s remember her obsession with being a lady (even if they were to have a terrible car accident) and her pressing The Misfit that ‘he wouldn’t shoot a lady’; she has ‘connections’ and not friends; she thinks the world is the United States or maybe just the Southern states; Europe is to blame for the loss of better times; she said she wouldn’t take her children anywhere dangerous and then she was the one that wanted to go see the house (she lied to the kids about the house so they would convince their father to go) and ultimately she did not say that they should turn back when she realized that it was the wrong place. The accident was no accident as the kids were yelling out in capital letters. Let’s remember although that she’s not the only bad one. The new are bad too. They are also wrong. They also live inconsistent lives (we should remember the granddaughter’s remark about painting the little black kids life that didn’t have what they did). Their irrationality is shown by the uppercase letters of the word THEY when the kids are trying to convince their father of going to see the house. The lady became good when she was about to die; when she was on her death bed she realized her mistakes. What then can be considered a good man? The one that tells and acts the truth? Or, does a good man need to be found? What about a woman? How hard is it to find a good woman? Does she have to be faced with death every minute of her life? But that’s no real pleasure in life.
