Author-Function

In class we discussed whether the "death of an author" was a literal death, and if not, what was meant by it.  After reading Foucault and Barthes' pieces, I felt their pieces, both interesting, were rehashments of what we would think is "common knowledge".  Though I could be wrong in thinking this, the argument that "Shakespeare" holds a bit more clout than a piece by "anonymous" is something most people would agree on.  As discussed, a name like "Shakespeare" holds a certain criteria that a reader expects the piece to live up to. Personally, this is where the death of an author takes place.  Once the author's name holds more meaning, more weight, more significance than "the one who wrote the following", I think they die as an author.  They become something more--a persona of something we expect.  When Grisham's first novel came out, Plath's first poems, Sparks' first book, we as readers only judged the book based on our own experiences with it (or perhaps what critics said).  Now, however, when we hear those names, we come with a set of great expectations on what their novels will be and how we will feel after.  The name has become a checklist, or a thing bigger than the person him/herself.  That's the death of the author--when they have to set aside their individuality for instead a more grandiose idea of self.

The concept of author-function in relation to the death of the author seemed to be pretty connected.  The death of the author (as explained above) allowed for the birth of the author-function.  Foucault even explains as a third point that one characteristic of the author-function is "the result of a complex operation which constructs a certain rational being that we call 'author'" (Foucault 909).  So we can have many writers, but I think we have much fewer authors.  There were four criteria in determining if a reader is dealing with one or many individuals--these all help to reaffirm the qualifications of an "author".  I would think that Foucault and Barthes both agree that about anyone can be a writer, but few can be authors. 


One thing I found particularly interesting was a passage in Foucault's piece.  He states that the first person pronoun used by an author is not referring to the author, "but rather to an alter ego whose distance from the author varies, often changing in the course of the work" (910). I thought that this was the point of writing--to allow the author to have an alter ego.  I would argue that this alter ego, in fact, helps to connect the author to the character much more than it serves to distance them.  Authors can become connected with a character, creating him/her based on characteristics they feel the need to express or traits they should conceal.  These characters, subconsciously (and consciously), become reflections of the authors--there are always parts of a character the author can relate to, and some traits that they cannot.  I think these traits differing traits can reflect characteristics the author wanted to have or did and eventually lost.  Regardless, this is why I find myself disagreeing with the idea of an author's death.  I think that figuratively, yes, part of an author dies...but I hate using the word "dies".  Instead, I like to think of it as an author metamorphosis; where the author begins beings as a single person and eventually, through the criteria mentioned by Foucault, transforms into an author-function--so that they can be more significant in the field of literature than a writer.