"What Is an Author?" (French: Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?) is a lecture on literary theory given at the Société Française de Philosophie on 22 February 1969 by French philosopher, sociologist and historian Michel Foucault.[1]
The work considers the relationship between author, text, and reader; concluding that:
The Author is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes and chooses: ... The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning.
