i really appreciated this lecture. it helped me understand foucalt for my literary theory class. his work is fairly dense so there were a lot of things i missed but this seemed to cover it all wonderfully.
This is great Dr Peña-Guzmán--thanks so much! If possible, I would love to see an episode on the "archive" in Foucault (and others?) work. Just discovered this podcast, and learning so much!
marvelleous explanation!!! it is such an interesting topic but foucault really makes it very difficult and complex to understand so I was DESPERATE. this is amazing and it helped a lot many thanks
We did a podcast episode last summer on Surveillance that discusses Foucault's view of the panopticon at length :) www.overthinkpodcast.com/episodes/episode-55
I did not know the name in French was Words and Things. That actually is better, since the act of authoring is taken from de Saussure’s linguistic concept of synchronic linguistics. In many ways, Foucault is building that systemic way introduced in de Saussure and flesh out it into the humanities is a clearer way that others had done. Under a de Saussure concept, the conceptual and other neurological connections to the two language modules of the brain, that produce and decode language. Of course there really isn’t a “pure” origin of any thing, but the field of derivative principles and ideas that gelled around de Saussure was captured by his students then ordered and organized. So even “de Saussure” was authored by a collective group over time. The combination of generative syntax in the US gave a great boast to linguistics, and the French resisted the type of orderly descriptions of multiple unconscious systems in the brain that order facts, things concepts in different structural levels in a momentary act of a systemic production or comprehension. The French were were too wrapped up with idea of Consciousness, along with other continental philosophers, to credit the individual with thinking. That singular ordered “authority” of consciousness (the author) is a basically only a momentary focal point for a vast and nearly instantaneous group systems of conceptual ideas that are connect to the language centers, some of these concepts build into ‘gestalt’ metaphoric objects that have been socially accepted holistically to speed up mental processing so the listener or reader can focus to “the main point.” Humans are in large part a neurological construct from evolutionary conditioning, operating an environment that is hostile they are trying o adapt and control for the sake of stability, and which knowledge derived from that shifting environment is neurologically flowing through the brain that can continually re-arrange and alter long term memory according to the moment. Sometimes underlying accepted metaphorical pre-constructed concepts, or gestalts, can be taken apart to reveal a historical construction of it to show why that gestalt concept was created, by who, under whose authority and the group that socialized it, altered in and ‘accepted it.’ Great stuff, inspiring, thanks.
super interesting, thanks for making philosophy accessible to all of us here on the internet!! i had just read barthes' 'death of the author' and was recommended this, which was a perfect addition to the entire topic :)
Excellent video. Very helpful in my understanding of Foucault’s work (or maybe I should say the “authorial function of Foucault”?) here. Thank you for uploading!
I'll watch it a third time, as I'd like to better understand what aestheticizing art means, among other things, but thank you so much for going over aesthetics.
My favorite example of a trans-discursive author is the American philosopher Ken Wilber and his Integral Theory, a theory of everything that seeks to include and draw conclusions from the relationships between all the knowledge traditions. Philosophical, spiritual, cultural, psychological ones, all of them, everything. Thanks for the video, it has me thinking about my relationship to the works of art I create.
Overthink is a great name for this podcast! I finished this video with the thought "hmm seems to be an excessive amount of thinking for an uninteresting subject."
Thanks for this! I’m going completely from TH-cam summaries but based on this I don’t feel like Foucault addressed the idea of the reader and what they bring to the text. Which was, in my opinion, what “The Death of the Author” really meant to convey. Like he almost got there with that 3rd element of the Author Function but fell short. Plus the whole social and political context in which the author and reader exist, that the “meaning” of any text is really an interplay between many, many elements of which these are only 2. Am I missing something here in Foucault’s essay? Was he not aiming that broadly?
Interesting take on the notion authorship. Is there a tangent here to that of being the “authority” on the content they write about? A comparison between Quality of writing to the Knowledge it contains and offers, comes to my mind.
Very interesting. As a Christian I want to think about this relative to the writing of the the four gospels in the New Testament. Each maybe one author or who knows but powerful messages.
I'm confused how this functions as a criticism to Barthes. What is the practical difference between 'the death of the author' and 'author function'? Both are critical of the 'author person' and their cultural importance, right? Barthes starts by noting that in contemporary culture, the 'person' of the author is of utmost importance and he ends by stating that the Author must die. There's no bullshitting about the power that the Author holds; on the contrary, that's the focus of his critique. Barthes also doesn't conflate the author and 'proper name', he just states that's the common confusion. To me it seems Foucault's "authorial function" is the bullshitty one because that's not how most people conceptualize what an author is and it's not how they interpret text; i.e. he might be right but that still leaves room for criticizing the broader culture. Foucault seems to sidesteps what I perceive as the core of "the death of the author" which is to de-emphasize the importance of the author (Author-God) when it comes to interpretation. It seems to me that accepting 'author function' necessarily leads to the death of the Author-God though the converse isn't necessarily true. Apart from fancy theoretical differences that are beyond my understanding, I guess Foucault's disagreement with Barthes is about whether the Author is useful for literary analysis? Where Barthes states that the Author must die so that the reader may flourish, Foucault thinks it's either useful or something that we can't get rid of (only change)? Barthes seems more prescriptive while Foucault more descriptive so I don't really see how they're incompatible (modulo the aforementioned fancy theoretical stuff).
Unfortunately, we don't have the budget for caption-correcting at this time; this is why we are using the TH-cam auto-generated ones, which are not perfect. Viewers and listeners can always support our production costs by joining our Patreon. All revenue goes directly into the project! www.patreon.com/overthinkpodcast
I love how David's smile faded away the minute he finished the lecture, hhaha. Thank you so muich for this as usual.
i really appreciated this lecture. it helped me understand foucalt for my literary theory class. his work is fairly dense so there were a lot of things i missed but this seemed to cover it all wonderfully.
This is great Dr Peña-Guzmán--thanks so much! If possible, I would love to see an episode on the "archive" in Foucault (and others?) work. Just discovered this podcast, and learning so much!
Thank you so much for this! I actually understood what he meant!!
marvelleous explanation!!! it is such an interesting topic but foucault really makes it very difficult and complex to understand so I was DESPERATE. this is amazing and it helped a lot many thanks
This lecture was lovely! Foucault has so much to say. I would really enjoy more lectures on Foucault. Perhaps Panopticism?
We did a podcast episode last summer on Surveillance that discusses Foucault's view of the panopticon at length :)
www.overthinkpodcast.com/episodes/episode-55
I did not know the name in French was Words and Things. That actually is better, since the act of authoring is taken from de Saussure’s linguistic concept of synchronic linguistics. In many ways, Foucault is building that systemic way introduced in de Saussure and flesh out it into the humanities is a clearer way that others had done. Under a de Saussure concept, the conceptual and other neurological connections to the two language modules of the brain, that produce and decode language.
Of course there really isn’t a “pure” origin of any thing, but the field of derivative principles and ideas that gelled around de Saussure was captured by his students then ordered and organized. So even “de Saussure” was authored by a collective group over time. The combination of generative syntax in the US gave a great boast to linguistics, and the French resisted the type of orderly descriptions of multiple unconscious systems in the brain that order facts, things concepts in different structural levels in a momentary act of a systemic production or comprehension.
The French were were too wrapped up with idea of Consciousness, along with other continental philosophers, to credit the individual with thinking. That singular ordered “authority” of consciousness (the author) is a basically only a momentary focal point for a vast and nearly instantaneous group systems of conceptual ideas that are connect to the language centers, some of these concepts build into ‘gestalt’ metaphoric objects that have been socially accepted holistically to speed up mental processing so the listener or reader can focus to “the main point.”
Humans are in large part a neurological construct from evolutionary conditioning, operating an environment that is hostile they are trying o adapt and control for the sake of stability, and which knowledge derived from that shifting environment is neurologically flowing through the brain that can continually re-arrange and alter long term memory according to the moment.
Sometimes underlying accepted metaphorical pre-constructed concepts, or gestalts, can be taken apart to reveal a historical construction of it to show why that gestalt concept was created, by who, under whose authority and the group that socialized it, altered in and ‘accepted it.’
Great stuff, inspiring, thanks.
super interesting, thanks for making philosophy accessible to all of us here on the internet!! i had just read barthes' 'death of the author' and was recommended this, which was a perfect addition to the entire topic :)
Excellent video. Very helpful in my understanding of Foucault’s work (or maybe I should say the “authorial function of Foucault”?) here. Thank you for uploading!
I'll watch it a third time, as I'd like to better understand what aestheticizing art means, among other things, but thank you so much for going over aesthetics.
My favorite example of a trans-discursive author is the American philosopher Ken Wilber and his Integral Theory, a theory of everything that seeks to include and draw conclusions from the relationships between all the knowledge traditions. Philosophical, spiritual, cultural, psychological ones, all of them, everything.
Thanks for the video, it has me thinking about my relationship to the works of art I create.
Overthink is a great name for this podcast! I finished this video with the thought "hmm seems to be an excessive amount of thinking for an uninteresting subject."
Thanks for this! I’m going completely from TH-cam summaries but based on this I don’t feel like Foucault addressed the idea of the reader and what they bring to the text. Which was, in my opinion, what “The Death of the Author” really meant to convey. Like he almost got there with that 3rd element of the Author Function but fell short. Plus the whole social and political context in which the author and reader exist, that the “meaning” of any text is really an interplay between many, many elements of which these are only 2. Am I missing something here in Foucault’s essay? Was he not aiming that broadly?
thanks, dude!!
very clear and helpful. ty :)
Interesting take on the notion authorship. Is there a tangent here to that of being the “authority” on the content they write about? A comparison between Quality of writing to the Knowledge it contains and offers, comes to my mind.
Very interesting. As a Christian I want to think about this relative to the writing of the the four gospels in the New Testament. Each maybe one author or who knows but powerful messages.
Great
Buzzwords first, definitions later? Or things first, and then words to describe them?
The locus of various potentialities
Do Lyotard! If you can.
I'm confused how this functions as a criticism to Barthes. What is the practical difference between 'the death of the author' and 'author function'? Both are critical of the 'author person' and their cultural importance, right? Barthes starts by noting that in contemporary culture, the 'person' of the author is of utmost importance and he ends by stating that the Author must die. There's no bullshitting about the power that the Author holds; on the contrary, that's the focus of his critique. Barthes also doesn't conflate the author and 'proper name', he just states that's the common confusion. To me it seems Foucault's "authorial function" is the bullshitty one because that's not how most people conceptualize what an author is and it's not how they interpret text; i.e. he might be right but that still leaves room for criticizing the broader culture. Foucault seems to sidesteps what I perceive as the core of "the death of the author" which is to de-emphasize the importance of the author (Author-God) when it comes to interpretation. It seems to me that accepting 'author function' necessarily leads to the death of the Author-God though the converse isn't necessarily true.
Apart from fancy theoretical differences that are beyond my understanding, I guess Foucault's disagreement with Barthes is about whether the Author is useful for literary analysis? Where Barthes states that the Author must die so that the reader may flourish, Foucault thinks it's either useful or something that we can't get rid of (only change)? Barthes seems more prescriptive while Foucault more descriptive so I don't really see how they're incompatible (modulo the aforementioned fancy theoretical stuff).
Hey my name is Author!
Subtitles must be correct and on centre so that everyone can understand the video.
Unfortunately, we don't have the budget for caption-correcting at this time; this is why we are using the TH-cam auto-generated ones, which are not perfect.
Viewers and listeners can always support our production costs by joining our Patreon. All revenue goes directly into the project! www.patreon.com/overthinkpodcast