Michel Foucault -What is an Author?

Research MethodsMonday, 1/30/12

Writing Prompt

In Sherman Alexie's short story "Breaking and Entering," the narrator reveals that he is Native, not white. How (if at all) would it change the events of the story if (a) he was white or (b) he was Native but did not tell us? How would it change our reading of the story if the author, Alexie, was white and not Native?

Writer as Dead Man?

" . . . the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more than the singularity of his absence; he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing" (102-3).

The Author's Name

How is the author's name different from any other proper name? (pages 106-7) What is Foucault's term for this difference?

Punishing the Author

Foucault suggests that the author's name becomes important in relationship to changing systems of legal punishment and property. What's he talking about here? (pages 108-9)

Science vs. Literature

Foucault argues that a reversal takes place between science and what comes to be called literature, in terms of the author and authority. What does he argue?

Author vs Writer vs Narrator"Everyone knows that, in a novel narrated in the first person, neither the first-person pronoun nor the present indicative refers exactly either to the writer or to the moment in which he writes, but rather to an alter ego whose distance from the author varies, often changing in the context of the work. It would be just as wrong to equate the author with the real writer as to equate him with the fictitious speaker; the author function is carried out and operates in the scission itself, in this divisoin and this distance" (112).

Transdiscursivity

What does this mean? How are Marx and Freud examples? How is this different from a scientific discourse?

Foucault's Proposals

1. The author function reduces the danger that fiction poses to the world. 2. The author does notprecede the text. What is he talking about?!?And how does this relate tosocial science methods?!?