Response to Foucault's "What is an author"

I will focus my short response on Foucault’s “What is an Author?” In this piece Foucault speaks about the many factors behind authorship and raises questions to find the purpose to which the author’s name serve as behind the work he or she produces. What I found to be important is the question Foucault raises asking “How does the author’s name function?” First, I will like to begin be defining what is an author, and according to the definition society uses to define he or she is “the person who originates or gives existence to anything.” In my opinion, this basically means without the author the work of literature will not have any type of meaning or will not be respected by society. I think that Foucault is trying to show readers that the author is an important aspect of the writing but we as readers should only base the writing on the author but also on how well the work is “itself.” The reason I think it is important to sometimes forget about who created is because we as readers can have our own opinion on how we feel about the work whereas if we stay with the mindset this my favorite writer so he or she will make this work appealing and fun we automatically try to enjoy the work so it also automatically becomes a good work of literature, and I being a reader of many works I give favoritism to my favorite authors. Also what reader’s seem to forget is that author’s create their works according to their environment, meaning that they are basically products of their environment.
In regards to what ways the author’s name functions in society Foucault says that the name may function as a “classificatory” function. An example, I got from what he means by “classificatory” is that if we were to go into a bookstore and we are looking for the book “The adventures of Tom Sawyer,” the first which comes to mind is looking up the author who is Mark Twain. Whereas if there was not an author we would have to change our search for the book by looking up the time period of the novel which was 1876 or by the amount of pages it contains. But since we always correlate the writing to the author we never really stop to open up our minds to other ways of relating to works of literature. I think Foucault wants us to show respect to the author for his or her writing but to also find other ways which we can find some type of relationship to the work besides the author. I also think the reason he does not what readers to completely disown the author is because he knows that is kind of impossible. Foucault argues this against his peers Barthes and Derrida, because Barthes argument is that readers “can do without the author and study the work itself.” And Derrida who focus is similar to Barthes tries to get rid of the author, but Foucault argues that Derrida does not actually do so because he basically shifts the focus of the author’s “power” to the language of the writing/ the writing itself.
Foucault then gives readers his theory on what is “author function,” he then explains that it does not have anything to do with writer/author or person behind the literary work. He then explains that the “author function” has to do with the production and classification of the work which is associated with a group of beliefs. Foucault then breaks down to readers the four characteristics of the “author function.” The first characteristic of the “author function” is a belief/statement which shows opposition or disagreement against the government or society’s beliefs. The second characteristic of the “author function” has a different affect depending on what kind of text it is. What Foucault means by this is that more people will ask who the author is of a poem or book but if it is a scientific text such as a periodic table people will not ask. The third characteristic of the “author function” is that there is more complexity behind the text then we realize, due to the notion that readers have that the writer/ author has to have some style to prove their work fit. The fourth characteristic of the “author function” is that the writer has an alter- ego which is represented by the narrator.
To conclude a literary text can be identified by itself if sometimes we as readers look further into the deeper meaning of the text. We should not only focus on the author’s popularity even though he or she plays a major role within the literary work.