From Elrena Evans to Michel Foucault

Yesterday author and speaker Elrena Evans visited the senior seminar in which I am currently enrolled. She spoke, among other things, of what she terms her miserable experience as a graduate school student. She earned a full scholarship and pursued her M.F.A, but said that she never felt as though she fit in among those of the academy. She spoke of the academic snobbery and of her pot smoking professors and classmates who could have carried less about the fictional stories she wrote about Bible characters. Snickers aroused from those who are also enrolled in this literary criticism class when she complained about having to study the lofty works of Derrida and Foucault. She asked we had yet studied the works of these two men. Ironically, I had read some Derrida the night before and was scheduled, according to the syllabus, to read Foucault today, which I did. I had read some of the work of Derrida in the past, but this was my first time studying Foucault, and Elrena is correct, correct in deed in regard to the loftiness of his subject matter.

One time I was scolded by an English professor who told me that I write too lofty. He told me that only lofty readers will be able to understand my writing. I don’t think my professor could necessarily have justified his scolding. What did he expect me to write like, when most of what we are assigned to read, within the major is rather up there, in the sky somewhere. Besides I have another excuse to offer, I am also studying religion, much of which is based upon writing that is totally out there, lofty, and high in the sky. Clearly, our reading influences how we write, though I am sure that could be argued on the contrary. Seriously, though sometimes all this lofty reading has me thinking so abstractly that I need someone to grab a hold of my ankles and pull me back down to earth. Ok, so perhaps I am being a bit dramatic and really this is more of a fear that I have, of how I could potentially become because of my choice of academic study. Anyway, I am seriously digressing more and more with every word, so now, onward with the purpose of this post. Foucault’s essay, What Is an Author, yea, from what I could gather he is calling into question what it means for “the death of the author” (thank you Roland Barthe for your infamous phrase). Foucault suggest that we must consider that “function” which the “author” fulfills within a given “discourse”.

The author, according to Foucault, precisely serves as an organizing device. As such the author allows us to group certain texts together. The function of the author is both to organize the vast reservoir of materials of the past, and to anchor a certain way of interpreting those materials. Seems that his ultimate target is that of “humanism”, or the postmedieval understanding of who and what individuals are. Foucault’s essay invites its readers to study the ways in which literary criticism approaches its object, the text, and accords it the prestigious title of literature; this partly through the exaltation of the author.

I’m pretty sure that Foucault loses sleep over questions such as the question of an author is, the one at hand in this essay. I found it strangely humorous that he seems so apologetic of some of his earlier work, which is the reason that he reevaluates his prior assumptions. I think I agree with Elrena, in regards to the loftiness of Foucault, but not to go without saying that Foucault has some interesting lofty ideologies regarding what an author is, even if nothing more.

Elrena Evan's Page:
http://elrenaevans.com/