Foucault And Barthes's Argument
1. In a paragraph of roughly 100 words, summarize Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes’s central arguments in “What is an Author?” and “The Death of the Author.” Your goal is to capture the overarching argument, the big picture. Often, you will recognize the central argument when the rhetoric becomes abstract, more explanatory, conceptual, or theoretical in tone.
⎯ Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes’s main argument center on the figure of the author and attempt to deconstruct the vision of the author as this privileged individual in the Western imagination. Both Foucault and Barthes point out there has always been this desire in Western society to attach an identity to the author. Barthes challenges the importance of the author by arguing that …show more content…
List the most important points that Foucault and Barthes offer to support their arguments. You are looking for abstract argumentation, not specific minor details.
⎯ Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?” o The work¬¬––Once an individual is considered an author, one must questions whether everything he wrote or left behind such as drafts, deleted passages, notes, or laundry lists are part of his or her body of work. o The notion of writing transposes the empirical characteristic of the author into transcendental anonymity. The work exists beyond his or her death, maintaining the author’s privilege. o “The proper name”––The author’s name performs a certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function (i.e. the identity of the author often affects the meaning of their work). o The author function as a mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of a certain discourses in society, which are subjected to appropriation. o The author function provides an index of reality to the literary work. If a work should be discovered in anonymity, the game becomes one of finding the author. o The author function does not refer purely and simply to a real individual, since it can give rise to different identities occupied by different classes of
⎯ Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes’s main argument center on the figure of the author and attempt to deconstruct the vision of the author as this privileged individual in the Western imagination. Both Foucault and Barthes point out there has always been this desire in Western society to attach an identity to the author. Barthes challenges the importance of the author by arguing that …show more content…
List the most important points that Foucault and Barthes offer to support their arguments. You are looking for abstract argumentation, not specific minor details.
⎯ Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?” o The work¬¬––Once an individual is considered an author, one must questions whether everything he wrote or left behind such as drafts, deleted passages, notes, or laundry lists are part of his or her body of work. o The notion of writing transposes the empirical characteristic of the author into transcendental anonymity. The work exists beyond his or her death, maintaining the author’s privilege. o “The proper name”––The author’s name performs a certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function (i.e. the identity of the author often affects the meaning of their work). o The author function as a mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of a certain discourses in society, which are subjected to appropriation. o The author function provides an index of reality to the literary work. If a work should be discovered in anonymity, the game becomes one of finding the author. o The author function does not refer purely and simply to a real individual, since it can give rise to different identities occupied by different classes of