I've been waiting all semester to use that title--and good ol' Foucault finally gave me an excuse! So, in keeping with this doubly appropriate question, I'd like to make a few observations on the concept of author function.
First of all, my basic understanding of the author function is that it refers to all the baggage and status associated with the proper name of the person who wrote a text. I love the example given in the intro to our copy of "What is an Author?" in which Shakespeare the Person--about whom we know very little for certain--is compared with Shakespeare the Author, who is pretty generally accorded a lot of respect and admiration.
So the author function is something different from the actual person himself.
Foucault then spends several pages explaining how this author function isn't something intrinsic to literature, but that it evolved over time. As it came about, it began to limit the interpretations that could "validly" be given to a text. People were interested in what the Author had intended. This gave rise to the idea that there was a single, unified meaning to a text. Which in turn led to the need for experts to give official interpretations.
Foucault, instead, calls for freedom from the tyranny of the author function, in favor of reader interpretation. He ends his essay by asking, "What difference does it make who is speaking?" What difference does it make whodunit, now that the deed is done?
Since we were also sent out to hunt down other blogposts on the topic, I checked out the first link on Dr. M.'s list. Lucky for me, it fit the bill perfectly, albeit in a quirky sort of way. The post I discovered is apparently a parody on the concept of "erasure," which I discovered is connected to Foucault's author function. If you check out the post, you'll see that the (anonymous!) author/writer has written a review (presumably of a journal article?), "erasing" all references to both him/herself AND to the author of the original work. Every proper name, pronoun--every reference to someone who put pen to paper--has been conspicuously deleted. The point, I suppose, is to show how the author function helps us make meaning, imperfect though the system may be. Foucault himself admits that some reference point is needed, noting that "It would be pure romanticism... to imagine a culture in which the fictive would operate in an absolutely free state..." (558).
A little more investigation then turned up class notes on the subject (from a professor of Critical and Cultural Studies in Canada), and I was able to figure out what "erasure" meant. It seems to be a deconstructionist's compromise with the problem of authorship--a little like bricolage. In other words, we make a big deal about authors, allow them to limit meaning, etc., but at the same time we can't quite get along without them. So we place them "under erasure." We take the author off the pedestal, but we let them stick around after all.
Until next time,
H.
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...being an investigation into the mysteries and meanings of literary and cultural texts and the application of various critical theories.
The Person Behind the Pen
- Harriet Vane
- Student of English Communications with a penchant for mysteries...
Evidence for the Case (Link List)
Case Files
The pen name "Harriet Vane" was chosen in homage to an intriguing literary character created by Dorothy L. Sayers in her immensely enjoyable Lord Peter Wimsey mystery stories. Harriet made her debut into the world of detective fiction in 1931 with Sayers' A Strong Poison.
3 comments:
Erasure is a process of writing a word with two lines criss-crossed on it, such that a horizontally elongated "X" can be seen atop the word itself. For Derrida, at least, erasure is a way of a) calling attention to the textuality of the language, since erasure is something that can be seen readily, but not so easily expressed in spoken word, and b) a means of showing that certain words have to be used because we are stuck with them, but that we can use them in a manner that heavily qualifies or questions their inherited meaning. Examples include words like "Being" or "Sign" - we couldn't just invent new words without referring to or differentiating them from these old ones, but that doesn't mean we have to carry all the ideological and ontological baggage that these words possess, each time we use them. So erasure is a solution, of sorts, to this problem.
Ken, thanks for the further explanation of "erasure." The fact that erasure is something you can only do in written language is especially interesting. It's a great point and seems to connect to the idea that we don't necessarily have to privelege speech....
First of all, I really dig “freedom from the tyranny of the author function,” it just seems to articulate so much within itself. Foucault is (I think?) trying to get us away from the author function (as in not the actual man/woman who put ink to paper, but rather the idea of an author that for some reason [copyrights] has become so important to us as readers today) despite so many critics claiming that they are “long past” using the author as a source of legitimacy, even though they still go through the motions as if they were. Crediting the author to give a text legitimacy is an old habit that is hard to kick. But once your past it, you enter a big open field of opportunity and happiness, if you ask Baudrillard that is. If you’re still talking to Foucault, things are still kind of sad.
and once again, excellent link! very relevent to what we're talking to
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