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them ." This objection, I think, is perfectly justified, and I have tried to
measure its implications and consequences in a study which will soon appear . •
But, another question comes up, the question of the author , and it is this
question I wish to discuss now. The notion of the author constitutes a strong
moment of individualization in the history of ideas , knowledge , and litera–
ture, as well as in the history of philosophy and science. Even today , when one
writes the history ofa concept , of a literary genre , or of a school of philosophy,
I think one regards these as secondary and superimposed on the fundamental
unity which is that of the author of the work.
I will not go into the socio-historical analysis of the figure of the author.
How the author is individualized in a culture such as ours, his status , the
system of values in which he is accepted, at what moment one begins
to
write
the lives not of heroes, but of authors, how that fundamental category of
criticism, " the man and the work, " is established- all of these questions
merit analysis . But I would like now to consider the reJationship of the text to
the author , who , in appearance at least , is exterior and anterior to it .
For the theme from which I take my point of departure, I borrow a for–
mulation from Beckett : "What difference does it make who is speaking ,
someone said, what difference does it make? " I think we must recognize in
this indifference one of the fundamental ethical principles of contemporary
writing . I say " ethical " because this indifference is not so much characteristic
of the manner in which one speaks or writes ; it is, rather , a sort of immanent
rule, which is endlessly repeated yet never completely applied , a principle
which does not characterize writing as a product, but which dominates it as a
practice. This rule is too well known to analyze at length ; it should be suffi–
cient here to specify it by referring to two large themes . First , one can say that
writing today has freed itself of the theme ofexpression : it refers only to itself.
Writing reveals itselfas a game which inevitably goes beyond its rules and thus
passes outside itself. What counts is not the demonstrativeness or the enthu–
siasm in the act of writing ; it is not a question of pinning down a subject in
language ; it is a q\lestion ofopening up a space where the subject continually
disappears .
The second theme is even more familiar ; it is writing 's engendering of
death. This relationship reverses an old theme : the narrative and epic poetry
of the Greeks created the immortality of the hero, and if the hero welcomed
an early death, it was so that his life, thus consecrated and magnified by
death , might be immortalized . In another way, Arabic narrative-I am
thinking of the
Arabian Nights-also
had the avoidance of death as its moti–
vation , theme , and pretext : they told their stories un til the small hours of the
morning to avert death, to put off that final accounting that would silence the
-The Archaeology o/Knowledge.
Pantheon Books.
