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.

"Creature" & Unity

In Foucault's "What Is An Author?" he outlines 4 strategies "strikingly" similar to those outlined by Saint Jerome, specifically with "defining the author present" and when dealing with "authentication" (1484). Foucault describes his as follows:

1. The author explains the presence of certain events within a text, as well as their transformations, distortions, and their various modifications... through an author's biography or by reference to [their] particular point of view...

2. The author constitutes a principle of unity in writing where any unevenness of production is ascribed to changes caused by evolution, maturation, or outside influence.

3. The author serves to neutralize the contradictions that are found in a series of texts...

4. The author is a particular source of expression who...is manifested equally well...in text, letters, fragments, drafts...

Number 2 is where I'd like to focus, as it seems to answer a problem de Man brings up in "Semiology and Rhetoric." De Man finds that the "figural nature of language" undoes the "stable pattern that we assume to determine meaning" (1363). He finds "semiology" to ask not "what words mean" but "how they mean," within the language they function in (1367). Maybe Foucault's author is the unifier of the work's language. The author creates their own diegesis and moves within it, choosing certain words to disrupt or confirm "stable patterns" of meaning. As we discussed last week, "creature" is a word used often in our class to describe the monster, yet we were surprised when Shelley's use of the word covered not only the monster, but more often, actual humans. Within Shelley's diegesis, the monster is a creature... just like the rest of us humans. In using the word, she at once treats the monster and humans the same. Through the word, she literally unifies them. Shelley uses her language and diction to draw parallels that she cannot-or chooses not to- spell out for her readers.