Foucault's "What is an author?"

In this video, Dr. David M. Peña-Guzmán explains Michel Foucault’s essay “What is an author?” Where Foucault describes authorship as a “discursive function.” By this, he means that authors are not the same—ontologically speaking—as individuals who write. Rather, authors are projections, namely, projections we make based on texts that not only are subject to laws concerning property and copyright, but that are also accredited with some form of scientific, philosophical, or literary value. Themes that come up in this talk include the nature of authorship, the history of writing, the French postmodernist concept of l’écriture, and discursive formations.