Foucault's "What Is an Author?"

I just want to start off by saying that I loved Foucault and "What Is an Author?"! This whole author business is a pretty heated conversation among theorists, huh? I think Foucault's conclusion is the one I most align with so far. I agree with the Intentional Fallacy in that a critic should focus on the form of a text for meaning and with Roland Barthes in that the writing should speak for itself. But in the back of my mind, I kept wondering how one could possibly discount the author completely. Don't we know the author of a work before we even open it? And doesn't the author make a difference in what works we read in the first place? I'm sure Bloom would have a huge problem with eliminating the author completely. In Foucault's examination of the author-function, he cannot do away with the author completely; he does, however, argue that the way critcs examine the author-function in a work should be altered. He says, "Suspicions arise concerning the absolute nature and creative role of the subect. But the subject should not be entirely abandoned...Rather, we should ask: under what conditions and through what forms can an entity like the subject appear in the order of discourse; what position does it occupy; what functions does it exhibit; and what rules does it follow in each type of discourse? In short, the subject (and its substitutes must be stripped of its creative role and analysed as a complex and variable function of discourse" (1489). Thus, applying this to Shelley and Frankenstein, how does Shelley fit into the discourse of the early 1800s? What cultural conventions shaped both Shelley and her work? A writer's life and environment make their way into his or her writing whether intentionally or not. So we can look in the work for these hints of the cultural conventions that went into its making. Also, I think Foucault's essay forces us to reexamine our pre-conceived notions of what an author is and why the author is so important to us today. Shelley is a prime example of the importance of the author in that she had to publish Frankenstein anonymously because she is a woman. And once people found out that the book was written by a women, they disliked it even more. I enjoyed Foucault's examination of how our concept of an author developed. And what's interesting is that now, Shelley's name is forever linked with her work. It's not just Frankenstein, but Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.