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Quote :"What Is an Author?"
We should reexamine the empty space left by the author's disappearance; we should attentively observe, along its gaps and fault lines, its new demarcations, and the reapportionment of this void; we should await the fluid functions released by this disappearance. In this context we can briefly consider the problems that arise in the use of an author's name. What is the name of an author? How does it function?
Uh oh, more author talk. Is he alive? Not really. Is he dead? Maybe. So he's what, a zombie? Um, no, more like a function. In a nutshell, Foucault is pretty much all for talking about texts without authors, but still finds it pretty handy to refer to writers' names while he's at it. That's why he gets at the whole function thing.
But first, things are obviously getting pretty confusing, so we should take a step back. What's left now that we've gotten rid of the author? Did anything new get stuck in its place? And hey, let's not shy away from the big question here: is the name of an author still useful at all?
Sure, it's no surprise that Barthes' essay "The Death of the Author" raised a few eyebrows. But it also inspired plenty of serious thinkers to re-think what they were up to when they talked about lit and philosophy. Foucault's essay "What Is an Author?" was a direct response to Barthes, and he starts out by admitting that Barthes' essay made him look back on his earlier stuff and cringe. Turns out, he hadn't given the question of the author much thought. (S'okay, Foucault, we all miss stuff sometimes.)
Ultimately, this essay argues that authors' names do still serve a purpose, even if all we really wanna think about is the convoluted matrix of the text and how hard it is to pin stuff down. So Foucault leaves us with the comforting thought of an "author function," meaning the author's name lets us categorize and classify relations between texts and think of them as filling specific spaces in our realm of thought. So what's the "function" of "Foucault"? You tell us.