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Literature
What is an Author?
What’s in a name? Marnie Binder asks if it matters who’s writing, and other questions of authorship.
“By certain manners of the spirit even great spirits betray that they come from the mob or semi-mob; it is above all the gait and stride of their thoughts that betray them; they cannot walk. There is something laughable about the sight of authors who enjoy the rustling folds of long and involved sentences: they are trying to cover up their feet.”
Friedrich Nietzsche The Gay Science
Perhaps Michel Foucault (1926-1984), twentieth century‘specialist in the history of systems of thought’ as he titled himself, was right when he said that the author remains an open question. He was likely influenced by the above aphorism, entitled ‘Gait’. Hence my question: What truly is an author?
In an essay called ‘What is an Author?’ (in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed by Donald Bouchard), Foucault doesn’t quite answer this question; rather he makes appropriate inquiries about the significance of a name.
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