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In the following pages, I will attempt to comment on Foucault?s Discourse of Language and What is an Author, and situate them in larger contexts. Wary of the constraining power of commentary, I have tried to let Foucault?s words present themselves as much as possible.

In What is an Author, Foucault begins by associating writing with the disappearance of the writing subject through a set of ?contrivances? that the subject sets up between himself and what he writes which ?cancels out the signs of his particular individuality.? Thus, writing ?is an interplay of signs arranged less according to its signified content than according to the very nature of the signifier ? In writing, the point is not to manifest or exalt the act of writing, nor is it to pin a subject within language; it is, rather, a question of creating a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears.?

This view of writing as absence and death was expressed a year earlier in Death of the Author, where Barthes wrote that ?writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.? This occurs ?as soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins.?

Barthes compared oral societies (mediator, shaman, or relator) and its ?performance? of narrative to the modern literate attribution of narrative responsibility to the author which he sees as the ?epitome and culmination of capitalist ideology?, where ?the explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it?. Yet the removal of the author is not merely a historical fact but transforms the modern text (?the text is henceforth made and read in such a way that at all its levels the author is absent?). It creates a (ontic) temporality where the author and work is seen as inhabiting the past and the future respectively (c/f Heidegger, Derrida). To give a text an author is thus to ?impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing?; instead Barthes situates meaning in the reader (?a text?s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination?) who functions to hold together ?all the traces by which the written text is constituted? (c/f Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding).

Although Foucault points to the notions of oeuvre and writing as hindering the full measure of the author?s disappearance, he seeks to go beyond ?the empty affirmation that the author has disappeared? and instead ?locate the space left empty by the author?s disappearance?. He begins by pointing out the ?paradoxical singularity? of the authors name, concluding that ?an author?s name is not simply an element in a discourse ?; it performs a certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function. Such a name permits one to group together a certain number of texts, define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to others. In addition, it establishes a relationship among the texts ... a relationship of homogeneity, filiation, authentication of some texts by the use of others, reciprocal explication, or concomitant utilization.? This ?author function? serves to characterize a certain mode of being of discourse and ?manifests the appearance of a certain discursive set and indicates the status of this discourse within a society and a culture.?

The ?author function? is not only a form of ownership but also an epistemic attribution to an author (Foucault sees literary discourses? drive to rediscover the author and meaning as its result). It is not a spontaneous attribution but a series of specific and complex operations where ?aspects of an individual which we designate as making an author are only a projection, in more or less psychologizing terms, of the operations we force texts to undergo, the connections we make, the traits we establish as pertinent, the continuities we recognize, or the exclusions we practice ? 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 (through his biography, the determination of his individual perspective, the analysis of his social position, and the revelation of his basic design). The author is also the principle of a certain unity of writing ? all differences have to be resolved, at least in part, by the principle of evolution, maturation, or influence. The author also serves to neutralize the contradictions that may emerge in a series of texts: there must be ? at a certain level of his thought or desire, of his consciousness or unconsciousness ? a point where contradictions are resolved, where incompatible elements are at last tied together or organized around a fundamental or originating contradiction. Finally, the author is a particular source of expression that, in more or less completed forms, is manifested equally well, and with similar validity, in works, sketches, letters, fragments, and so on? (c/f Foucault on oeuvre). Moreover, the text does not refer purely to a real individual since it can give rise to several selves and subject positions.

Transposing the author of a text to the ?author? of a ?discipline?, Foucault suggests that such ?transdiscursive? authors are ?not just the authors of their own works. They have produced something else: the possibilities and the rules for the formation of other texts ? they made possible not only a certain number of analogies but also (and equally important) a certain number of differences. They have created a possibility for something other than their discourse, yet something belonging to what they founded ? to open it up to a certain number of possible applications.? Thus ?we can understand the inevitable necessity, within these fields of discursivity, for a ?return to the origin.? This return, which is part of the discursive field itself, never stops modifying it.?

In short, Foucault attempts to reverse the ?ideological? status of the author which he sees as ?the principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning?. Unlike Barthes, however, he refuses to locate the final site of meaning with the reader, instead ?the author function will disappear, and in such a manner that fiction and its polysemous texts will once again function according to another mode, but still with a system of constraint ? one that will no longer be the author but will have to be determined, or perhaps, experienced.?

Before moving on to Discourse of Language, I propose a necessary diversion to Nietzsche, Genealogy, History where Foucault reveals the influence of Nietzsche and examines genealogy through an analysis of the use of Ursprung , Entstehung and Herkunft in Nietzsche. Ursprung (origin) in Nietzsche is counterposed to Enstehung and Herkunft , for Ursprung is ?an attempt to capture the exact essence of things, their purest possibilities? which ?assumes the existence of immobile forms that precede the external world of accident and succession.? Thus a genealogy will never confuse itself with a quest for ?origins?, and ?neglect as inaccessible all the episodes of history. On the contrary, it will cultivate the details and accidents that accompany every beginning; it will be scrupulously attentive to their petty malice ? The genealogist needs history to dispel the chimeras of the origin ? He must be able to recognize the events of history, its jolts, its surprises, its unsteady victories and unpalatable defeats.?

Herkunft (descent) on the other hand ?permits the discovery, under the unique aspect of a trait or a concept, of the myriad events through which ? they were formed. Genealogy does not pretend to go back in time to restore an unbroken continuity that operates beyond the dispersion of oblivion; its task is not to demonstrate that the past actively exists in the present ? Genealogy does not resemble the evolution of a species and does not map the destiny of a people. On the contrary, to follow the complex course of descent is to maintain passing events in their proper dispersion; it is to identify the accidents, the minute derivations ? or conversely, the complete reversals ? the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things which continue to exist and have value for us; it is to discover that truth or being lies not at the root of what we know and what we are but the exteriority of accidents ? The body ? and everything that touches it: diet, climate, and soil ? is the domain of Herkunft . The body manifests the stigmata of past experience and also gives rise to desires, failings, and errors.? [1]

Equally important is Entsehung (emergence) which is always produced in a particular state of forces. As it is ?wrong to search for descent in an uninterrupted continuity, we should avoid accounting for emergence by appeal to its final term ? These developments may appear as a culmination, but they are merely the current episodes in a series of subjugations ? emergence is thus the entry of forces; it is their eruption, the leap from the wings to center stage ? where they are displayed superimposed or face to space. It is nothing but the space that divides them, the void through which they exchange their threatening gestures and speeches ? only a single drama is ever staged in this ?nonplace?, the endlessly repeated play of dominations.? Thus genealogy seeks ?not the anticipatory of meaning, but the hazardous play of dominations.?

Hence genealogy is for Nietzsche (and Foucault), wirkliche Historie (historical sense/spirit c/f Hegel) which should always question the suprahistorical perspective (traditional history) ? ?a history whose perspective on all that precedes it implies the end of time, a completed development? (c/f Hayden White ?history that narrativizes?) i.e. ?the former inverts the relationship ordinarily established between the eruption of an event and necessary continuity?. While historians ?take unusual pains to erase the elements in their work which reveal their grounding in a particular time and place ? Nietzsche?s version of historical sense is explicit in its perspective and acknowledges its system of injustice. Its perception is slanted, being a deliberate appraisal, affirmation, or negation ? Through this historical sense, knowledge is allowed to create its own genealogy in the act of cognition; and wirkliche Historie composes a genealogy of history as the vertical projection of its position.?

It is apparent that Foucault was profoundly influenced by Nietzsche?s work which (like Marx) marked a break in philosophy. Through Nietzsche, Genealogy, History we can perhaps better understand Foucault?s intent in questioning the ontic and epistemic premise of the ?author function?, and why he begins with Discourse of Language with the wish of being freed of having to begin for the origin has ?particular, fearsome, and even devilish features.? Yet ?institutions have an ironic reply (to this all too common feeling), for they solemnize beginnings, surrounding them with a circle of silent attention; in order that they can be distinguished from far off, they impose ritual forms upon them ? in every society the production of discourse is once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous awesome materiality.? (c/f historian and author function) For Foucault, the ?ancient elision of the reality of discourse in philosophical thought? is enabled through ?the theme of the founding subject? who ?indicates the field of meanings?. (c/f Ursprung)

This control is achieved by rules of exclusion of through prohibition, division and rejection, and the opposition of true and false. There are three types of prohibition; covering objects, ritual with its surrounding circumstances, the privileged or exclusive right to speak of a particular subject ? ?these prohibitions interrelate, reinforce and complement each other, forming a complex web, continually subject to modification.? Foucault cites the speech of a mad man as an example of division and rejection ? noting the historical changes in its reception, and how these old divisions persist today albeit in different forms and institutions (c/f projection of oeuvre with author function). The ?will to truth?, on the other hand, changes historically and ?like the other systems of exclusion, relies on institutional support: it is both reinforced and accompanied by whole strata of practices ? But it is probably even more profoundly accompanied by the manner in which knowledge is employed in a society, the way in which it is exploited, divide and, in some ways, attributed ? True discourse, liberated by the nature of its form from desire and power, is incapable of recognizing the will to truth which pervades it.? (c/f Ursprung and author)

To these systems which police the exterior of discourse, Foucault adds internal rules (commentary, author, disciplines) ?where discourse exercises its own control; rules concerned with the principles of classification, ordering and distribution. It is as though we were now involved in the mastery of another dimension of discourse: that of events and chance.? (c/f What is an Author ? author is congruent to ?author function?, disciplines is congruent to ?transdiscursive?) [2]. A third set of rules also exist to control discourse although ?we are no longer dealing with the mastery of the powers contained within discourse, nor with averting the hazards of its appearance; it is more a question of determining the conditions under which it may be employed, of imposing a certain number of rules upon those individuals who employ it, thus denying it to everyone else ? none may enter into discourse on a specific subject unless he has satisfied certain conditions.? (eg. education)

In order to study these three systems of control, Foucault proposes two groups of analyses through notions of chance, discontinuity, and materiality ? the ?critical? group (reversal) and the ?genealogical? group (discontinuity, specificity, exteriority). (c/f negative dialectic, Hyppolite) ?Criticism analyses the processes of rarefaction, consolidation and unification in discourse; genealogy studies their formation, at once scattered, discontinuous, and regular (c/f Enstehung and Herkunft )? The difference between the critical and the genealogical enterprise is not one of object or field, but of point of attack, perspective and delimitation.? [3]

In Foucault, we see the return of history in cultural studies/critical theory; an independent recovery of critique of/through history after the Frankfurt school [4]. Both were influenced by Nietzsche and Marx (who both tried to transcend Hegel) and were critical of contemporary society and its institutional forms, offering historical and oppositional analyses that were dialectical and subjective. What came between them were writers such as Stuart Hall, John Fiske, Pierre Bourdieu, and Roland Barthes whose analytic and positivist (objective) analyses focused on the uses and content of contemporary culture that did not necessarily challenge it [5]. Thus we can trace the locus of radical thought that began in Germany and shifted to France after WWII.

How is the author linked to history and Foucault?s larger project? In Foucault?s genealogy, both are sites of power derived from the belief in an (essentialist) origin ? the historian as an author of (suprahistorical) History, and the author as simultaneously constituting and preceding history of the text (i.e. transcendental signifier). If we consider Derrida?s sundering of objects into the realm of free signification, language becomes a site of discursive practice whose authority is derived through a reference to an origin (c/f signifier/signified) [6]. Like other discursive practices such as madness and sexuality, it constantly polices and inscribes itself onto the body such that it appears natural, and to originate from an essential origin (c/f Nietzsche on morality). In order to recover (real) history from (constructed) History, one must lose the suprahistorical belief in Ursprung and instead critically assess Herkunft and Entsehung to understand the current conditions of our existence.

However perhaps the most radical critique is offered by Benjamin in The Origin of German Tragic Drama where he argues that the notion of an origin is ?an entirely historical category?; and an artwork has a life of its own that is independent of its author. Thus the death of the author that Foucault and Barthes claim is a phantasm; the revelation of the obsolescence of historically constructed desire.