What is an Author?
Michel Foucault, 1969
Preliminary thoughts... How does this apply when it is a self-portrait? obviously a personal thing, but then with the self, as I have demonstrated the self isn't just one thing, it itself is open to interpretation for the ineffable entity it is. Perhaps then when I look over my own project, that is one interpretation of it as I have discovered it, I simply know more information than others (however other people may know things about myself that I am not even aware of and come to their own conclusion) Perhaps it has been a bias that things have to have ONE meaning, ONE inherent truth behind it...
So thinking back to the question, is it possible to ever have an accurate representation of oneself? Well it would appear that the possibility exists of accuracy, however there is no possibility of confirmation of authenticity because of how easily we can be influenced. If the Death if the author is taken to be the case, then an accurate representation would seem to become irrelevant? It does not matter the accuracy to which this represents that because it is the interpreted message that is important... However, I guess it would be shortsighted to fully exclude the photographer and perhaps I can again critique some of this to suggest that the author may still have some presence on the work, if not as the Author, as possibly the keeper of knowledge, meaning they know most about it, they are the authoritive person when it comes to knowing about that particular thing/object/text/whatever.
Finally in dissertation I can bring this question to a reality based source to help find a solution, such as Facebook, in which self-portraits, as amateur as they come, are constantly being produced, and obviously it might go without saying perhaps there is no Authority or meaning behind the photo but people obviously decide what the photos means given the pragmatic world and way it is presented... i.e on facebook, in a profile, it is determined to be a certain way and project a certain thing with a certain amount of context, I'm saying 'certain' way too much...
Context driven, wisdom of the crowd.
Helpful commentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT302ezP6mI
Caution: no page numbers...
"The coming into notion of "author" constitutes the privileged moment of individualisation in the history of ideas, knowledge, literature, philosophy, and the sciences. Even today, hen we reconstruct the history of a concept, literary genre, or school of philosophy, such categories seem relatively weak, secondary, and super - imposed scansions in comparison with the solid and fundamental unit of the author and the work." p1
"at what point we began to recount the lives of authors rather than heroes, and how this fundamental category of "the-man-and-his-work criticism" began." p1
"For the moment, however, I want to deal solely with the relationship between text and author and with the manner in which the text points to this figure that, at lest in appearance; is outside it and antecedes it." p1
Beckett formulates the theme "What does it matter who is speaking."
-today's writing has freed itself from the theme of expression
it is, rather, a question of creating a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears.
-the second theme, writing's relationship with death, is even more familiar.
"The work, which once had the duty of providing immortailty, now possesses the right to kill, to be its author's murderer, as in the cases of Flaubert, Proust, and Kafka."
In photography how often do we have time to refer to the authors intent or biographical information? Sometimes not often, however it does seem to enhance the work does it not, as well as contextual information to go along with the work. It seems that the photograph without the writing is already very ambiguous and open to interpretation, which is the ideal case, but then the argument persists about truth vs this
"Using all the contrivances that he sets up between himself and what he writes, the writiing subject canels out the signs of his particular individuality. As a result, the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more than the singularity of his absence; he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing." p2
"A certain number of notions that are intended to replace the privileged position of the author actually seem to preserve that privilege and suppress the real meaning of his disappearance." p2
First idea is of the work [oeuvre]
task is not to bring out the work's relationships with the author, nor rrecontrust through the text a thought or experience, but rather to analyse the work through its structure, its arcitecture, its intrinsic form, and the play of its internal relationships."
-Problem, what is a work?
"If an indivudual were not an author, could we say that what he wrote, said, left behind in his papers, of what has been collected of his remarks, could be called a "work"? p2
"Even when an individual has been accepted as an author, we must still ask whether everything that he wrote, said, or left behind is part of his work. The problem is both theoretical and technical." p2
-what can be considered a work? parts or scribblings.. a laundry list?
suggest how I do not like where this is leading us very impersonal this is turning out to be
"How can one define a work amid the millions of traces left by someone after this death?" p3
could go further...
"The word work and the unity that it designates are probably just as problematic as the status of the author's individuality." p3
This capter needs to be paired with Berger's another way of telling, I feel. However this could be another chapter, focusedonthe seer, or something like that... talks about the ambiguity of the photograph... However this ambiguity wouldn't exist now? Would it?
subtley preserves the author's existence... is writing.
"We try, with great effort, to imagine the general condition of each text, the condition of both the space in which it is dispersed and the time in which it unfolds." p3
...
not enough to repeat the authors death.. "Instead, we must locate the space left empty by the author's disappearance, follow the distribution of gaps and breaches, and watch for the openings this disappearance uncovers." p4
"we need to clarify briefly the problems arising from the use of the author's name. What is an author's name? How does it function? far from offering a solution, I shall only indicate some of the difficulties that it presents." p4
§proper name does not have just one classification
"However - and it is here that the particular difficulties of the author's name arise - the links between the proper name and the individual named and between the author's name and what it names are not isomorphic and do not function in the same way. There are several differences." p4
example of Shakespeare, if he didn't write the sonnets, if he wrote something addutional etc
"The author's name is not, therefore, just a proper name like the rest." p5
"Such a name permits one to group together a certain number of texts, define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to others." p5
"author function" introduced.
"A private letter may well have a signer - it does not have an author; a contract may well have a guarantor - it does not have an author. An anonymous text posted on a wall probably has an editor - but not an author. The author function is therefore characteristic of existence, circulation, and functioning of certain discourses within a society." p6
--If we limit our remarks to the author of a book or a text, we can isolate four different characteristics
- FIRST discources are objects of appropriation
authors punished
author's rights, author-publisher relations
was a time when narratives, stories, epics, tragedies comedies were put into circulation without any question about the identity of the author p6
I would say perhaps as the world became more linked, and communications improved, the necessity for an author to be credited became more important because things are so easily worldwide now.
people who invented / discovered - christened
today author function plays an important role
"It is not simply a manner of indicating the source but of providing a certain index of "reality" " p7
THIRD
"The name as an individual trademark is not enough when one works within a textual tradition" p8
so, problem if more than one work belongs to the same author...
Saint Jerme imposes 4 criteria:
i) inferior book attributed to the same artist, must remove that book
(author is then defined as a constant level of value
ii) if there are severe contradicitons in the main doctrine
(author has conceptual or theoretical coherence)
iii) exclude works written in a different style
(author is a stylistic unity)
iv) things mentioning things after author's death - interpolated texts
(author seen as historical figure, crossroads of numerous events
p8
Modern literary criticism
"the author provides the basis for explaining not only the presence of certain events in a work, but also their transformations distortions, and diverse modifications" p8
"the author also serves to neutralise the contradictions that may emerge in a series of texts."
IMPORTANT
"The text always contains a certain number of signs referring to the author" p9
talks about use of verbs, nouns, narrative style etc
Talk about the other three selves in the writing p9
"No doubt, analysis could discover still more characteristic traits of the author function."
limits to just four...
1 AF linked to juridical and institutional systems
2doesn't affect all discourses in the same way
3 not defined by single discourse but by series of complex operations
4 does not refer to an individual, several selves.
"I seem to have given the term "author" much too narrow a meaning" p10
Can give rise to more than just our work, Freud gave rise to psychoanalytic discource, which in turn allows Lacan, Klein, Jung to do also... p11
seem to present a new difficulty...
?
confused now..
End of p12 - to conclude
"I believe, in the activity of the author function and in its modifications than in the themes or concepts that discources set in motion." p13
"We must entirely reverse the traditional idea of the author." p13
"We are accustomed, as we have seen earlier, to saying that the author is the genial creator of a work in which he deposits, with infinite wealth and generosity, an inexhaustible world of significations." p13
"The truth is quote the contrary: the author is not an indefinite source of significations that fill a work; the author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses; in short by which one impedes tge free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition, and recomposition of fiction." p14
"In fact, if we are accustomed to presenting thw author as a genius, as a perpetual surging of invention, it is because, in reality, we make him function in exactly the opposite fashion." p14
new questions can be asked if we got rid of the author.
What difference does it make who is speaking?
my reading guide:
http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60a/handouts/author.html
Taking something as a given, and turning it into a problem - what is an author?
Does it matter who is speaking?
What is a work?
What is a name?
Author function
Death of the author does help me sideshift the problem I have been seeking, but blows open a new hole for me to deal with... in completely doing away with the author, what has happened to our question?
Okay, perhaps we can question the merits of this and suggest it WAS an important move for the author to step down as the important step, but then suggest how the seer, perciever is intelligent and can still use details to work out things,
However, we encroach open open wounds, the perciever is prone to the consious unconscious bias, the unknowing of the authorial intent...
BOOM then I can suggest the wisdom of the crowd and context dependency.
Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk
What is an Author? notes
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