BE or NOT TO BE an author

Notes about “What is an author?” By: Michel Foucault

As Barthes, Foucault introduces us the notion of ‘author’. A closer aproximation at the theories about this. He gives us more examples about different authors of the History to explain the funtions that one author have. For him, an author achieves the individualization about ideas and knowledge. He divides the authors in different categories, for instance transcursive authors like Marx o Freud (Foucault says that they are the ‘big authors of the History’, because they created a new discursive way) or the novel writers.

However, at the end he starts to ask himself when we can know who is an author or how we can know that one author is the real author of the work. As Barthes, Foucault relates the notion of author with originality and with the notion of work of art. Why one author has more importance than the other ones? Why one work is more important than the other? and the most important for my: How we can delimit the authorship of works? In this point he speaks about Galileo and shows us that all the works derivates from Galileo ideas could be Galileo autorship as well. Why not? But this idea introduce us another problem: who is the original author of one work? Are only authors like Galileo, Marx or Freud ‘real authors’? For Foucault seems yes.

At the same time Foucault tries to explain the difficult point about the name of the author. He speaks about Shakespeare like an example to show us that the name of the author has the power to classify the works and to create an image of the author and the work inside our heads: “If we proved that Shakespeare did not write those sonnets which pass for his, that would constitute a significant change and affect the manner in which the author’s name functions”. In my opinion the important issue is, at the end, the work and not the name of the author. If we will discover that Shakespeare had never written Romeo and Juliete we will destroy the author but the work will continue alive. Finally, I think that the name of the author only is a way to reputation for him/her but It should not matter to readers. Although Foucault didn’t think the same.