More on the "Author Function"

by Chris Schatz

Because the author's name has served a classificatory function, Foucault creates the notion of the author function. The author function serves to establish relationships among texts within certain discourses. There are four main roles of the author function, according to Foucault. The author function serves to codify writings as objects which can be legally owned and subject to penal appropriation; in other words, writing may be considered intellectual property. The author function also has different effects in different discourses, and a notable result of this is that anonymity is not accepted in literature. The author function is constructed in order to conform to certain criteria, and therefore an author (as opposed to a writer) cannot precede a work. Lastly, the personality and perspective of the author do not correspond with those of the real writer. Foucault's author function creates a principle which relates to the work without actually supposing a real person.

Foucault's construction of the author function explains how, since the eighteenth century, the author has become an ideological figure (Foucault, 119). No longer a real person, this ideological figure given the characteristics of the author function represents what is feared in literature, art, and music. The prevalence of the principle of author function has resulted in the stifling of the spread of ideas and the suppression of the creation and circulation of meaningful works by writers who are not granted the traits of the author function. Foucault believes it is possible for a discourse to develop in which the constraints of the author and author function do not precede the subject of particular works. For Foucault, the author is never completely absent; as a principle, author is an impediment to the spread of ideas and meaning. Foucault suggests that a future discourse could develop in which relative anonymity would allow ideas to be circulated with attention given to the principles of subject instead of author.