"What's In a Name?"
"...that which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet."
Those Shakespearean lines famously uttered by Juliet to her star-crossed lover tell us that a name is nothing more than an artificial and meaningless convention, and that she loves the person called Montague, but not the family associated with it. Is a name nothing more than a meaningless convention? What is the function of a name? In the same sense one can ponder the notion of the 'author' and authorship. Here is why Shakespeare is great, he poses a question then steps away... Shakespeare, as Michel Foucault would say, establishes the "endless possibility of discourse." However, I need to stay on task and try to make some sense of Foucault's essay "What is an Author?".
In his essay Foucault comes to the conclusion that an author's name is not simply an element of speech. The purpose of the author's name is that it serves as a means of classification, that it can "group together a number of texts and thus differentiate them from others. A name also establishes different forms of relationships among texts." One of the main points I extracted from his essay was that the function of the author is to specifically characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certain discourses within society.
However, it is very interesting that Foucault points out that these aspects of an individual, which we designate as an author are our own psychological projections which allow us to handle texts. As a literature major I would definitely agree in the statement that the author helps explain the presence of certain events in a text. By reading the author's biography, one can analyze his position in terms of his socio-economic class etc. Another interesting point of discussion is how the 'author-function' arises. Foucault breaks it down to the division between the author and what he calls the 'second self' and that the author function arises out of the two.
Searching through some academic blogs in hopes of reading more about this notion of the author I found a blog entitled Meaningless that referred to John Lye's essay, "The ‘death of the author’ as an instance of theory". This essay brought up some interesting points, one being that how can we (the readers )guarantee (and should we even guarantee this?) that we are in fact reading the text 'properly' as the author would have had us read it. Our reading of an author's work is an interpretation which can result in various meanings. This point also brings me back to Foucault's argument over what is meant by an author's "work"? How is it decided what constitutes the work of a writer, considering that a writer would have obviously left behind hundreds of thousands of written artifacts...Again, these are such interesting questions to pose and it seems it all comes down to interpretation and meaning...and maybe Foucault is correct in stating that, "we lack a theory to encompass the questions generated by a work and the empirical activity of those who naively undertake the publication of the complete works of an author".
By any other word would smell as sweet."
Those Shakespearean lines famously uttered by Juliet to her star-crossed lover tell us that a name is nothing more than an artificial and meaningless convention, and that she loves the person called Montague, but not the family associated with it. Is a name nothing more than a meaningless convention? What is the function of a name? In the same sense one can ponder the notion of the 'author' and authorship. Here is why Shakespeare is great, he poses a question then steps away... Shakespeare, as Michel Foucault would say, establishes the "endless possibility of discourse." However, I need to stay on task and try to make some sense of Foucault's essay "What is an Author?".
In his essay Foucault comes to the conclusion that an author's name is not simply an element of speech. The purpose of the author's name is that it serves as a means of classification, that it can "group together a number of texts and thus differentiate them from others. A name also establishes different forms of relationships among texts." One of the main points I extracted from his essay was that the function of the author is to specifically characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certain discourses within society.
However, it is very interesting that Foucault points out that these aspects of an individual, which we designate as an author are our own psychological projections which allow us to handle texts. As a literature major I would definitely agree in the statement that the author helps explain the presence of certain events in a text. By reading the author's biography, one can analyze his position in terms of his socio-economic class etc. Another interesting point of discussion is how the 'author-function' arises. Foucault breaks it down to the division between the author and what he calls the 'second self' and that the author function arises out of the two.
Searching through some academic blogs in hopes of reading more about this notion of the author I found a blog entitled Meaningless that referred to John Lye's essay, "The ‘death of the author’ as an instance of theory". This essay brought up some interesting points, one being that how can we (the readers )guarantee (and should we even guarantee this?) that we are in fact reading the text 'properly' as the author would have had us read it. Our reading of an author's work is an interpretation which can result in various meanings. This point also brings me back to Foucault's argument over what is meant by an author's "work"? How is it decided what constitutes the work of a writer, considering that a writer would have obviously left behind hundreds of thousands of written artifacts...Again, these are such interesting questions to pose and it seems it all comes down to interpretation and meaning...and maybe Foucault is correct in stating that, "we lack a theory to encompass the questions generated by a work and the empirical activity of those who naively undertake the publication of the complete works of an author".
posted by L.C. Gendall at
8:41 AM
5 Comments:
Hi L.C. You need to provide a link to the post you mention.
i thought that what you read in the other blog was really interesting. how do we know that we are reading a text the way in which the author would want us to? we can know as much about the author as we want but still you do not always know their intention on every work they write.
That is true but doesnt that bring it back to the text being able to stand by itself as a work. It doesnt need any more interpretation. In a way it is what it is.
This comment has been removed by the author.
the purpose of a text isn't to convey a direct message from author to reader, but for the reader to take what they take on their own terms.. naturally, without subscribing to the author's intentions. those are personal. i does seem to be all about the idea that the author is dead once their work becomes public. their name only exists to group together these works. once their work becomes public, it is up to the reader to maintain it.
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