What is an Author? by Michel Foucault

This article is taken from Art in Theory 1900-2000 pp 949-953

Foucault contends that the author's name is more than an element in a discourse. It performs a classificatory function allowing relationships between texts. There is a feeling of  homogeneity and characterization. A discourse containing an author's name must be received in a certain mode and afforded a certain status.

So discourses are endowed with 'author-function' while others like a private letter or a contract, do not. 

Foucault identifies two Characteristics of 'author-function' in discourses:

•  objects of appropriation - historically penal. Authorship arose with being subject to punishment although Foucault adduces no evidence for this claim;
• differentiation in author-function between types of discourse. Scientific papers in Middle Ages were typically validated only when marked with name of author, whereas the 'ancientness' of literary discourses was sufficient to guarantee status, though this changed in 17th/18t century

We are accustomed to endowing authors with signification:

"...as soon as he speaks, meaning begins to proliferate, to proliferate indefinitely."

Foucault argues this is mistaken, that in fact the author is no more than a means to choose, to classify, to eliminate, he is an impediment to free circulation, manipulation and composition. 

He does acknowledge that a completely free state is 'pure romanticism', there will be a post 'author-function' constraint system, without enunciating what. It would be a world where discourses develop in an 'anonymity of a murmur'. We would no longer be interested in claims of authorship, of concerning ourselves with authenticity, but with a more objective analysis of the uses to which the discourse may be put, and behind it all, it would make no difference who is speaking. 

This seems rather idealistic. For a start, our academic system is based on authorship, as is our literary system. Authors are rewarded for originality, for profuseness, for individuality, insightfulness, and entertainment. To deny this would be to suffocate discourse. It simply would not be worth turning up. One has only to see the lack of scientific discovery and artistic creativity in socialist societies to understand what would happen. One may ask, if Foucault believes the 'author-function' is dead, why he allows his name at the head of the article?