What is an Author?

Roland Barthes's declared the death of the author in 1968. Though Barthes was later to refine his categorical assertion, the declaration became, arguably, the most famous slogan for the fast-growing field of "theory". In 1969, Foucault published a piece that lends its title to this collection of essays. Foucault called for a time when authorship, and along with it the limitations on meaning that the author-functions bring, would no longer be relevant, when it would make no difference who was speaking. Although new theoretical arguments have emerged in the last few years which avoid a return to the old humanist conception of the author, little has been published since 1969 that deals with authorship directly. This book invites a number of scholars who work in different academic disciplines and from different theoretical perspectives, to take up Foucault's challenge again. Written some 20 years after the dramatic declaration and Foucault's considered response, the essays collected here are sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory. They all work with "theory" and form part of a continuing debate on the nature of authorship.