What is an Author? @Michael Foucault

Michel Foucault is not a Freudian, Marxist, Socialist, Structuralist or a Literary Theorist but a post-structuralist thinker. However, he draws on ideas and assumptions from them.

His Works

Mental Illness and Psychology 

Madness and Civilization 

The Birth of the Clinic 

The Order of Things 

According to him, his primary concern is not to analyze the concept of authors throughout the ages but to show their relationship with the text. He tries to figure out how a text points out to a figure who is outside and proceeds with it. His What is an Author? was originally a lecture he had delivered in 1969 at College de France on 22nd February 1969. It talks about the relationship between author, text, and reader. It was a response to Ronald Barth's The Death of the Author (1967) 

“What Matter Who is Speaking” -Samuel Beckett

This statement creates an indifference between author and text i.e. an author has no role in a text. According to Foucault, it is unethical because it has been adopted very much but not applied fully. However, as a principal, it dominates our writing as we focus on finished work only and not in the drafts or those which are not included. 

• Today’s writings talk about internity of text and have thus freed from expression. However, it is not confined. 

• We also look for exterior deployed. Writing employees testing its limits of regularity and reversing orders. 

• It subverts, accepts, manipulates breaks its order and moves ahead. 

• Exalted emotions are not the base of writing though they compose it. Rather in today’s writing subject disappears. 

It is a kinship between writing and death that gives birth to the author. (Thus it contradicts with Barthe’s statement, “Author is dead, the reader is born.” 

Greek heroes die soon but become immortal. In Arabian Nights too, the author desires to remain immortal. So the immorality of the author and hero were an important part of older texts. They made the author important On the other hand, contemporary writings are linked to the extent of sacrificing the life. Today there is no representation of self. The text rather kills the author. In order to know the author, we will have to understand the singularity of his absence and his link to death. The absence of the author leads to the genuine possibility of change. Unlike Greek plays, there is no hero in today’s writing. 

  

Authors Name and Proper Name

According to Michael Foucault, the author’s name is a designation whereas the proper name is a description that tells about his ideas about nature and other things. It should be noted that the author’s name and the proper name are different. e.g. if we come to know that the grave of Shakespeare does not belong to him, it will not have any impact on Shakespeare. On the other hand, if we come to know that The Tempest was not written by Shakespeare, it will definitely have an impact on our views regarding Shakespeare. 

The Functions of Author 

1. The author is a part of a legal system. Initially, there was the concept of sacred and unsacred (when religion was dominant) texts. The text which was in accordance with the interest of dominant religious ideology was considered to be sacred while the others were unsacred. However, after the 18th century, the concept of legalizing the author came into existence and the author’s name became an important part of the texts. e.g. Today we can’t copy a book legally. We have to seek permission from the respective authors. 

2. Author’s function is not universal. It differs from discipline to discipline i.e. from subject to subject and from time to time. In earlier times the author’s name was not required in the literary works as they included moral stories that represented the societies interest and thus were acceptable whereas the scientific works were required to be associated to author’s name in order to authenticate them. However, after the 18th century, there was a complete shift. The literary texts were required to be associated with their authors and on the other hand, scientific texts were not required to be associated with them. e.g. We have to remember who wrote The Tempestbut not the one the one who gave a Mathematical Equation. 

3. Author’s function does not refer to a single individual but gives rise to multiple selves and a series of subjective position. For example, Marx or Freud writings are not just their own writings but also about how one particular text that they produced had the power to produce other texts and discourses or perhaps the entire paradigm of knowledge, radically new form of thinking, a new system of thought into being. 

4. Author’s function is not formed spontaneously. Rather he is constructed. Saint Jerome gave four criteria for this author’s function.

• Author’s name functions as a label of a certain standard level of quality. Those texts which do not meet this quality are eliminated. e.g. drafts. 

• Those texts which contradict the author’s ideas are eliminated. 

• Those texts which are against the writing style of the author are eliminated. 

• The events that happened after the death of the author are also eliminated.

Michel Foucault believed that there could be more authors function as well. According to him. 

• An author as the centre is constructed to establish a unified meaning from text. So the text itself is meaning. 

• An author can be displaced from the text but cannot be removed completely. 

• A text needs to be related to the larger group of texts or discourses. They cannot be studied in isolation. 

• The author is an ideological figure.

 Types of Authors

According to Michel Foucault, there are two types of authors: 

1) Transdiscursive: They are the fathers. e.g. Aristotle, Homer etc. 

2) Founder of Discursivity: Those who resolve complex expressions into simpler or more basic ones. e.g. 19th century Europeans.

 Foucault and Barthes 

 

• Barthes criticises author but Foucault problematizes him. 

• Barthes creates binaries (e.g. author vs reader) but Foucault considers the author as the construct of the reader. 

• Barthes philosophy is limited to the idea of literature and literary criticism whereas Foucault succeeds in extending problem from imaginative literature to the domain of non-fictional writings.

Thus, in the essay What is an Author? , Michel Foucault elaborated the concept of author and instead of declaring the death of author after creating the text, he questions the role of author. He discusses the major functions of author in detail.

The Storyteller @Walter Benjamin

•  Introduction 

The Storyteller is an essay written by a German Jewish intellectual Walter Benjamin. He is famous for his work The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. The Storyteller is a discussion on the stories of Russian writer Nikolai Leskov. It represents Benjamin's views on: 

1) Stories and Storytelling 

2) Novels and Writing 

The essay lists what Benjamin considers to be the primary characteristics of the storyteller and examines each one in turn, both in theoretical and historical terms and as evidenced by the fiction of Leskov. Benjamin examines the sources of storytelling, analyzes its basic characteristics, points out its differences from other similar narrative forms, suggests what in human experience gives it its most basic authority, and laments nostalgically its inevitable passing away in the modern world. 

•  Nature of Story Telling 

The first criteria of storytelling Benjamin describes is its oral nature; moreover, he says, of those who write down stories the best ones are those who most closely stick to a simulation of this oral source. Benjamin says there are two basic types of oral storytellers- 

1) Those who come from afar and tell of their adventures (embodied in the figure of the travelling seaman) 

2) Those who stay at home and tell of events there (as represented by the stationary farmer.)

The second characteristic of the storyteller is an orientation toward practical interests;  all stories contain something useful, Benjamin argues, whether that useful  information is obvious and on the surface or whether it is embedded within the narrative in some way. Thus, stories do not derive from idle gossip or even from the  need to recount interesting experiences, but rather they spring from a basic human  need to recount real-life examples of trying to cope with the mystery of human reality. 

• Decline of Storytelling 

However, storytelling is dying out, says Benjamin; we no longer seem to have the ability to exchange experiences. He offers several historical and sociological reasons for storytelling's demise. The most basic reason for the death of storytelling is the fact that the communicability of experience itself is dying out; thus storytelling, which always offers counsel, has no more place in the modern world. Indeed, wisdom itself, which Benjamin defines as counsel woven into the fabric of life and thus which has its origins in storytelling, is dying out. This process, which Benjamin links to the increasingly secular forces of history, have gradually removed narrative from the realm of living speech. 

• The Emergence of Novel 

The rise of the novel is one of the primary symptoms of the decline of storytelling, Benjamin suggests. For the novel is quite different from the story in that it neither comes from the oral tradition, nor does it go into it. Whereas the birthplace of the story is the teller's experience, the novel begins with the solitary self. Whereas the story springs from orality, the novel is bound to the form of a book. Whereas the storyteller takes his story from experience, either his own or what he has heard from others, the novelist is no longer able to express himself by giving examples of his most important concern. 

• Information and Storytelling 

Furthermore, Benjamin says, another form of communication has come to predominate in the modern world which threatens storytelling even more seriously than the novel; that is, "information," by which Benjamin means primarily the information of the news media. The difference between the forms of storytelling and forms of news information, argues Benjamin, is that whereas storytelling always had a validity that required no external verification, information must be accessible to immediate verification. Storytelling differs from information in that storytelling does not aim to convey the pure essence of the experience in some distilled way, but rather imbues the story with the life of the storyteller. Aspects of the storyteller cling to the story; this is the reason why many storytellers begin with the circumstances by which they have gained access to the story they are about to tell. 

This distinction between storytelling and information points to one of the primary differences between the "truth" of story and the truth of other forms of explanation characteristic of discursive writing. Whereas, in such forms of discourse as history, sociology, psychology, etc, the aim of the work is to abstract from concrete experience so that a distilled discursive meaning remains, in story, the truth is somehow communicated by a recounting of the concrete experience itself in such a way that the truth is revealed by the details of the story, not by abstract explanation. 

The story has a compactness that defies psychological analysis; in fact the less  psychological shading the story has the more the listener will remember it and tell it  to someone else later on, says Benjamin.

Whereas story is borrowed from the miraculous and does not demand plausibility or  conformity to the laws of external reality, information must be plausible and conform  to such laws. When stories come to us through information, they are already loaded  down with explanation, says Benjamin; it is half the art of storytelling to be free from information Because the reader of story is free to interpret things the way he  understands them, story has an amplitude lacking in information.

Another basic difference between story and information is that whereas the value of  information does not survive the moment of its newness, a story is so concentrated  that it retains its truth power for a long time. Moreover, story stays in the memory  and compels the listener to tell it to someone. In fact, insists Benjamin, it might be  said that storytelling is the art of repeating stories, for when the rhythm of the story  seizes the reader he listens in such a way that the ability to retell it comes by itself. 

• Storytelling as an Art 

However, Benjamin does not spend the entire essay focusing on such external characteristics of story as how it is transmitted. He is also concerned with what gives storytelling its validity, since he insists that, unlike information, it does not require external verification. Instead, the story finds its validity in the awareness of death, says Benjamin. One's wisdom and real life, the very stuff of stories, become transmissible at the moment of death, and thus death is the sanction for whatever the storyteller tells, for death is storytelling's ultimate authority. However, since increasingly modern man has become distanced from the actual experience of death, Benjamin argues, we can see another reason why the art of storytelling is coming to an end. Whereas dying once was a public process for the individual, in modern times death has been pushed out of the perception of the living. In deriving its ultimate validity from death, Benjamin argues, story faces ultimate reality, not immediate reality; that is, story deals with man's most basic existential situation in the world.In describing the craftsmanship required of story, Benjamin cites Paul Valery, who notes that nature creates perfection through a long chain of causes; man once imitated nature, says Valery, by elaborating things to perfection, but he does so no longer. Modern man is only concerned with dealing with what can be abbreviated and abstracted; he is no longer concerned with telling stories by the layering of various retellings so that multiple experiences of storytellers can imbue the story with concrete human meaning.

Benjamin also sets up a distinction between the chronicler and the historian to clarify his definition of storytelling. Whereas the historian must explain the happenings he describes, the chronicler is content with displaying the events as models of the course of the world. Whereas the chronicler bases his tales on a divine plan of salvation and thus is relieved of the burden of explanation, the historian is bound to the abstraction process that explanation demands. The storyteller preserves the nature of the chronicle, Benjamin says, albeit, in a secularized form. 

• Storyteller and the Listener 

The most basic relationship between the storyteller and the listener, Benjamin argues, is the listener's need to retain the story so that he can reproduce it. There is a crucial difference between the way memory is manifested in the novel and the way it is manifested in the story, Benjamin says. Memory is that which creates the chain that passes story from one generation to the next, much as a web is created in which one story ties on to the next. What distinguishes memory in story from memory in the novel is the perpetuating "remembrance" of the novelist as contrasted with the short-lived "reminiscences" of the storyteller. Whereas the remembrance of the novel is bound to one hero and one journey, the reminiscences of the storyteller encompass many diffuse occurrences.

• The Heart of Storytelling 

As a result, story focuses on the relatively concrete "moral of the story," while the novel focuses on the more abstract "meaning of life." The first true storyteller, says Benjamin, is the teller of fairy tales, for the fairy tale provides good counsel. According to Benjamin, whereas realistic narrative forms such as the novel focus on the relatively limited areas of human experience that indeed can be encompassed by information, characters in fairy tales or stories encounter those most basic mysteries of human experience which cannot be explained by rational means, but which can only be embodied in myth. The wisest thing the fairy tale teaches is to meet the forces of the mythical world with cunning and high spirits. What the fairy tale, and therefore the tale, does is to tell us how to deal with all that which we cannot understand. 

• Teachers as Storytellers 

The storyteller is of the same company as that of teachers and sages, says Benjamin, for the storyteller has counsel for many based on a lifetime of experience. The gift of the storyteller is the gift of relating his life, for he is able to fashion the raw material of experience, both his own and the experience of others, in a solid and useful way. It is therefore unfortunate, says Benjamin, that storytelling, that is, the ability to exchange experiences is being slowly taken from us. 

• Conclusion 

To conclude, one can say the role of Storyteller was, is, and will always remain important in the society. The storyteller passes the cultural values, morals, experiences, etc. from generation to generation.