The Author-Function

The author is not a person who writes. Michel Foucault’s 1969 essay “What Is an Author?” argued that the name attached to a text is not a biographical designation but a principle of discursive organisation performing at least four distinct institutional functions simultaneously: it classifies texts into bodies of work, enabling coherent oeuvres from disparate productions; it assigns legal accountability for content; it authenticates by promising access to a specific consciousness; and it enables commercial transactions by functioning as a brand. These four functions are not unified by any necessary connection—they are historically contingent arrangements that emerged when texts became property, when the circulation of ideas became legally regulated, when the Romantic ideology of individual genius provided philosophical foundation for the legal and commercial structures the publishing industry required. Each is being differently disrupted by the arrival of AI co-authorship, which is why the AI authorship debate generates more heat than light: participants address different functions under the single heading