A critical summary of Michael Foucault’s ‘What is an Author?’

Foucault begins by introducing the idea of an author as an individualisation within a field such as literature or philosophy. As the notion of an author quite obviously arose within literature originally, work on authorship focuses heavily on literature, and this is something that also features in work on genre. Because of this, it often means that it is harder to apply the theories to film.
However, Foucault believes that when studying theories of genre and other similar concepts, it becomes clear that they are of inferior quality, and not as useful as studying work through the lense of authorship. It could be argued that authorship lets us define meaning more clearly, because if we accept the author as the solitary producer of meaning within a work, perhaps we can define and understand the piece more completely. However, Foucault’s dismissal of genre theory disregards the importance of studying a piece within a group of similar works to understand how conventions create meaning.
Foucault seems to suggest that a works significance and meaning is made not from the subject matter, but by how it is communicated by the arrangement of elements that make up the work.
Something that could be criticised within some theories of authorship is the almost worshipful nature they apply to an author, as the ‘sole creator of meaning’, disregarding outside influences, unintentional meaning and for example, audience, as creators of meaning.
Foucault presents an interesting idea that could oppose this, suggesting that the writing of or creation of a piece of work is almost a sacrifice, a voluntary disappearance into your creation, the ‘death of the author’. He criticises a theory that attempts to support this idea, arguing that while it intends to displace the author, it in fact does the opposite, upholding it and suppressing the real reasons for an author’s literary ‘death’. This theory proposes we study a piece not through, or to understand, the work’s relationship with the author, but through analysing the work’s form and content. The issue with this theory is that, as Foucault reminds us, that to consider a piece of writing a ‘work’, we have to first have an author, otherwise would not every piece of writing be a work, and worthy of analysis? He then interestingly points out that even if we do consider someone an author, we can surely not believe that everything they wrote in their lives constitutes a ‘work’. This evidently means that when studying a work in the way the theory proposes, you must be aware of the context of the author, and Foucault states that it is inadequate to claim we should study the work and disregard the author. In these theories, however, surrounding the ‘death of an author’, he draws our attention to the importance of studying the space left behind, and the possibilities this presents, for example, the ‘birth’ of the audience, and the recognition of them as fundamental to finding significance within a work.
Foucault also raises the issues surrounding an author’s name, but although he explores these and the difficulties that arise, he does not fully resolve the issues, as he himself admits. The issues lie in what the name signifies, and Foucault explains that an author’s name is, like all other names, a description of the person, without just one signification but of endless meanings, resulting in it being unable to be turned into a singular reference. However, the issues raised by an author’s name are more complex that that of an ‘ordinary name’, they function as a representation of the author’s body of work. An author’s name, as Foucault puts it, has a role, performing a ‘classificatory function’. This name, in a manner similar to genre, creates the ability to group together a number of works and ‘define them, differentiate them from, and contrast them to others.’ Foucault’s well-expressed summary of the function a name has, can help us understand the idea of an author having a persona or being a symbol, rather than an ordinary individual.
He offers an example here of Hermes Trismegistus – he did not exist, but had a number of works placed under his name because of a sense of homogeneity throughout them, and this surely again has to be comparable to the ideas of genre that Foucault earlier dismissed.
Foucault also discusses ideas of ownership in relationship to works, and how this has developed through history. Before the seventeenth or eighteenth century, works with narratives, such as tragedies or comedies were accepted for their content and didn’t appear to ‘need’ an author, their apparent ancientness placing enough of a guarantee of quality upon them. Works of scientific content, dealing with subjects such as cosmology, geography and natural sciences were only accepted and seen to be accurate if they included their author’s name. Subsequently this seems to be reversed, with scientific discourses being accepted for their own merits, and with literary creation being dependant on the author function, anonymity becoming an enigma to decode, and audiences becoming desirous of an author for the work they experienced.

Foucault eloquently sums up the function of the author, stating that it is inextricably linked to the ‘universe of discourses’, although effecting said discourses differently depending on the civilisation in which they are present, and that the supposed ‘author’ does not have to refer to a individual but can refer to ‘several selves’.
Although the ‘death of an author’ and suppressing the privileged position of an author has been discussed, Foucault does not dismiss the importance of the author and presents the idea that they are not only the author of their own text but can exceed that with the possibilities they present. It appears apparent, then, that there are conflicting ideas within Foucault’s piece.

Foucault establishes the idea that to understand a text, the study of the relationship between itself and its author, or lack of, is necessary, and although he discusses opposing concepts and calls for a culture without the necessity of authorship, he admits himself that this is ‘pure romanticism.’ Foucault longs for the day when a work’s importance is governed by its content, not by who is speaking, and although he contemplates the moment that he believes will one day come, where the author function will disappear, his piece arguably does not dispel the need for one.