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First of all, discourses are objects of appropriation.

authors became subject to punishment

discourse was not originally a product, a thing, a kind of goods; it was essentially an act

The author function does not affect all discourses in a universal and constant way, however. This is its second characteristic

it has not always been the same types of texts which have required attribution to an author

There was a time when the texts that we today call 'literary' (narratives, stories, epics, tragedies, comedies) were accepted, put into circulation, and valorized without any question about the identity of their author; their anonymity caused no difficulties since their ancientness, whether real or imagined, was regarded as a sufficient guarantee of their status

Scientific discourses began to be received for themselves, in the anonymity of an established or always re-demonstrable truth; their membership in a systematic ensemble, and not the reference to the individual who produced them, stood as their guarantee

literary discourses came to be accepted only when endowed with the author function

literary anonymity is not tolerable

The third characteristic of this author function is that it does not develop spontaneously as the attribution of a discourse to an individual.

It is, rather, the result of a complex operation which constructs a certain rational being that we call 'author'.

directly derived from the manner in which Christian tradition authenticated (or rejected) the texts at its disposal

trying to prove the value of a text by its author's saintliness

the author is therefore defined as a constant level of value

the author is thus defined as a field of conceptual or theoretical coherence

the author is here conceived as a stylistic unity

the author is here seen as a historical figure at the crossroads of a certain number of events)

The author is also the principle of a certain unity of writing

The author also serves to neutralize the contradictions that may emerge in a series of texts

signs referring to the author. These signs, well known to grammarians, are personal pronouns, adverbs of time and place, and verb conjugation. Such elements do not play the same role in discourses provided with the author function as in those lacking it

Everyone knows that, in a novel narrated in the first person, neither the first-person pronoun nor the present indicative refers exactly either to the writer or to the moment in which he writes, but rather to an alter ego whose distance from the author varies, often changing in the course of the work. It would be just as wrong to equate the author with the real writer as to equate him with the fictitious speaker; the author function is carried out and operates in the scission itself, in this division and this distance.

all discourses endowed with the author function do possess this plurality of self.

(1) the author function is linked to the juridical and institutional system that compasses, determines, and articulates the universe of discourses; (2) it does not affect all discourses in the same way at all times and in all types of civilization; (3) it is not defined by the spontaneous attribution of a discourse to its producer, but rather by a series of specific and complex operations; (4) it does not refer purely and simply to a real individual, since it can give rise simultaneously to several selves, to several subjects - positions that can be occupied by different classes of individuals.

in the sphere of discourse one can be the author of much more than a book - one can be the author of a theory, tradition, or discipline in which other books and authors will in their turn find a place

transdiscursive

'founders of discursivity

They have produced something else: the possibilities and the rules for the formation of other texts.

The relationship (or non-relationship) with an author and the different forms this relationship takes, constitute - in a quite visible manner - one of these discursive properties.

First, there are theoretical reasons. On the one hand, an analysis in the direction that I have outlined might provide for an approach to a typology of discourse.

an introduction to the historical analysis of discourse

modes existence

re-examine the privileges of the subject

Second, there are reasons dealing with the 'ideological' status of the author

How can one reduce the great peril, the great danger with which fiction threatens our world? The answer is: one can reduce it with the author. The author allows a limitation of the cancerous and dangerous proliferation of significations within a world where one is thrifty not only with one's resources and riches, but also with one's discourses and their significations. The author is the principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning.

the author is not an indefinite source of significations which fill a work; the author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses; in short, by which one impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition, and re-composition of fiction

It would be pure romanticism, however, to imagine a culture in which the fictive would operate in an absolutely free state, in which fiction would be put at the disposal of everyone and would develop without passing through something like a necessary or constraining figure

I think that, as our society changes, at the very moment when it is in the process of changing, the author function will disappear, and in such a manner that fiction and its polysemous texts will once again function according to another mode, but still with a system of constraint -one which will no longer be the author, but which will have to be determined or, perhaps, experienced.

We would no longer hear the questions that have been rehashed for so long: Who really spoke? Is it really he and not someone else? With what authenticity or originality? And what part of his deepest self did he express in his discourse?

What are the modes of existence this discourse? Where has it been used, how can it circulate, and who can appropriate it for himself? What are the places in it where there is room for possible subjects? Who can assume these various subject functions? And behind all these questions, we would hear hardly anything but the stirring of an indifference: What difference does it make who is speaking?

linguistically, the author is never anything more than the man who writes, just as I is no more than the man who says I: language knows a "subject," not a "person,"

once the Author is discovered, the text is "explained:

Once the Author is gone, the claim to "decipher" a text becomes quite useless.

To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing

utterly transforms the modern text

he reign of the Author should also have been that of the Critic,

by refusing to assign to the text (and to the world as text) a "secret:'

no one (that is, no "person") utters it:

he true locus of writing is reading.

the reader is a man without history, without biography, without psychology; he is only that someone who holds gathered into a single field all the paths of which the text is constituted.

subtitles

the lesson of the parodies seems to be that “Downfall” was a closeted Hitler comedy. Having seen the spoofs before seeing the movie, I find it virtually impossible now to watch the film with a straight face

many of the “Downfall” parodies choose not to have Ganz-as-Hitler directly ventriloquize another politician or figure of derision. Instead, as with the Malaysian parody, the spoofs often make the new speaker a disappointed supporter of a public figure.

cult value

easier to exhibit a portrait bust that can be sent here and there than to exhibit the statue of a divinity that has its fixed place in the interior of a temple

The same holds for the painting as against the mosaic or fresco that preceded it

Only later did it come to be recognized as a work of art

cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance

The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuse for the cult value of the picture

It is instructive to note how their desire to class the film among the 'arts' forces these theoreticians to read ritual elements into it -- with a striking lack of discretion

Do not all the bold descriptions we have given amount to the definition of prayer?

the film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience during his performance, since he does not present his performance to the audience in person

aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it. The aura which, on the stage, emanates from Macbeth, cannot be separated for the spectators from that of the actor. However, the singularity of the shot in the studio is that the camera is substituted for the public. Consequently, the aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays.

art has left the realm of the 'beautiful semblance'

the consumers who constitute the market. This market, where he offers not only his labor but also his whole self, his heart and soul, is beyond his reach. During the shooting he has as little contact with it as any article made in a factory.

The film responds to the shriveling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the 'personality' outside the studio

The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the 'spell of the personality,' the phony spell of a commodity

the newsreel offers everyone the opportunity to rise from passer-by to movie extra

For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers -- at first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for 'letters to the editor.' And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer.

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public

The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public, such as developed in the nineteenth century, is an early symptom of the crisis of painting, a crisis which was by no means occasioned exclusively by photography but rather in a relatively independent manner by the appeal of art works to the masses.

Painting simply is in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience, as it was possible for architecture at all times, for the epic poem in the past, and for the movie today.

painting, under special conditions and, as it were, against its nature, is confronted directly by the masses.

graduated and hierarchized mediation

Thus the same public which responds in a progressive manner toward a grotesque film is bound to respond in a reactionary manner to surrealism.

One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later.

The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form.

Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial -- and literary -- means the effects which the public today seeks in the film.

What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of production

painting of Arp

ancient lament that the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator. That is a commonplace

Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it

In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art.

Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction.

Tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit.

attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building

Buildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception -- or rather, by touch and sight

For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation.

art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the film

Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true .means of exercise.

The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.

War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system