What is an Author?

What is an Author? by me, not Michel Foucault
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"Michel Foucaut, where did you go? Are you the author of this thing or not?" Sezzaye.
"I am dead, yet I am immortal. I am the opposite of a genius. What I am doing is hiding from you the conversation and discourse that was happening in the year 1968. I'm impeding free circulation. You will read only what I say and the hidden histories not signified by me will be erased." Sezzee.
Well now that the author is dead, do we really care who wrote it? Yes, the mystery of the victim's identity must be solved. It is a question of law and order!
The author is dead. The reader is dead. Althusser is dead. God is dead? What a bunch of stiffs!
So, the woman was left and she came into the room and looked at the row of four bodies laid out. She peeked under the first blanket that was covering the author's face [the blanket is the sign, signifying the dead of the individual underneath of it].
"So, writing finally got you - in the end - did it?" Sezzuhr...
"You can't keep putting off life, see where your quest for immortality led you?
Never mind that, I'll crack this case. [a safe is obliquely referred to though in reality it is about Police/Detective stereotype 'casework' a.k.a. reliure En français]
So she sat down and invented a computer that would write a book for Everybody and share it with the world, sans authur [en francais].

Foucault is supposed to be radical how he challenges the idea of authorship. He challenges our ideas of name and famousness also. However, I think he doesn't go very far and ought to look at the basic level of materialism, as would a Marxist. Copyright, Trademark and Patents are all very important issues and give legal standing to the ownership of ideas and the authorship of texts. However, he doesn't mention that stuff. He stays away from the real and keeps to the philosophical and less dangerous terrain. His focus is mostly on discourse, but who is he, the author of this text talking to?

I do think the philosophical angle can be interesting too: is it even possible to have an original idea? I think not really. As an artist/creative type I'm often told what I say or produce is original or unique. But, I feel that all of my ideas come from outside of me and how I arrange them is really all that I author. Even that turns out to be a copy sometimes - I realise - after the fact. As a child I composed some music from tunes in my head onto the computer, yet these melodies were easily identified pop music when I recently re-heard them.

The New Keywords text has an interesting write up on the etymology of 'copy.' Copying comes from copious and only in modern times has it meant a diminutive, inauthentic characteristic. Authentic is related to authorship is it not?

But, the non-philosophical issues of copyright and authorship are more interesting to me. Let's have a discourse about things we can act on, not just think about! Truth is revealed in curious circumstances. The Aboriginal issues of private property ownership are quite intriguing. It seems that in Salish traditions from this part of the world land was owned in a fairly public sense by groups but certain songs and names were private individual property. The economy of this ownership was spiritual more than commercial. Still, names were of economic material value in weddings and other ceremony.

If it wasn't for the aboriginal history I would be an anti-copyright zealot because in computers, intellectually private property is unnecessary and divisive. I see the extension of intellectual private property as a modern enclosure movement that threatens to cause loss of freedom and oppression on a scale greater possibly even than the industrial revolution and the land enclosure [fencing off] movement. However, maybe I'm wrong and the aboriginal idea of private songs is a better one.

I'm not too keen on Foucault because he muddles the issue rather than enlightens. I think he makes some great points about challenging authorship but his ideas are behind the rapidly changing realities. I don't think ownership of ideas and restriction or censorship of them is good for society. However, his desire to do away with the individual voice lacks a sense of what people want. I think the Aboriginal private intellectual property was about preserving a distinct identity because it is important. Similarly, modern gender, sex, anti-racist and other movements have fostered a healthy focus on personal identity. It is important for our psychological well being to not feel faceless.

That said, identity can get too individually focused and there certainly is a lot of commercial exploitation of the 'niche' markets.

If it makes no difference who is speaking, why did he write his name to his essay?