Thoughts after reading the two pieces below-
What is an Author- Michael Foucault
The Death of the Author- Roland Barthes
The basic difference between Barthes’ essay and Foucault’s one is the general perspective on the subject of authorship, which doesn’t prevent my mind from drawing conclusions and comparisons to define my understanding of the same.
In the ‘What is an author’, Foucault forays into an inquiry of what happens to authorship and goes on to complicate the notion of what it means to be an author. Borrowing the term ‘Author’ from ‘The Death of the Author’, Foucault explains his understanding by raising questions and introducing his concept behind the ‘author function’. He talks of the need for authorship and brings forth a subtle understanding of how it relates to individual work versus an entire discourse. The role of an author and the reader are compared in bilateral conditions rather than quoting which is better than the other.
Foucault submits to the eventual ‘death of the author’ and further complicates the matter of concern by shaking the very foundations of an author and his text. These bipolar conditions in the reader and the author, are operative and imperative functions which allow them to coexist.
On the contrary, Barthes in his paper ‘The Death of the Author’, actively attempts to kill the ‘Author’ with a full frontal strike stating how redundant and meaningless it truly is. He makes the writer seem like some self proclaimed author which is unnatural and is a historical phenomenon that unfortunately affirms a heroic status. He asks for the notion of authorship to be rethought since any written piece is multifaceted in its manifestation and is waiting to be deciphered differently by every conscious mind that reads.
Simply put, as a classical dancer of Bharatanatayam, I would understand the nuances and relevance to history (as an Author) being portrayed by the dancer (as a writer) as compared to a lay man (as a reader) who would be in awe of the art form for its beauty alone.
Foucault is clearly interested in questioning the definition of what an author is through his inquest of text and language rather than singling out or targeting an ‘Author’ to strike.
