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What is an author now? Discourse analysis applied to the idea of an author

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss and shed light on the following questions: What is an author? Is it a person who writes? Or, is it, in information, an iconic taxonomic designation (some might say a “classification”) for a group of writings that are recognized by the public in some particular way? What does it mean when a search engine, or catalog, asks a user to enter the name of an author? And how does that accord with the manner in which the data have been entered in association with the names of the entities identified with the concept of authorship? Design/methodology/approach – The authors use several cases as bases of phenomenological discourse analysis, combining as best the authors can components of eidetic bracketing (a Husserlian technique for isolating noetic reduction) with Foucauldian discourse analysis. The two approaches are not sympathetic or together cogent, so the authors present them instead as alternative explanations alongside empirical evidence. In this way the authors are able to isolate components of iconic “authorship” and then subsequently engage them in discourse. Findings – An “author” is an iconic name associated with a class of works. An “author” is a role in public discourse between a set of works and the culture that consumes them. An “author” is a role in cultural sublimation, or a power broker in deabstemiation. An “author” is last, if ever, a person responsible for the intellectual content of a published work. The library catalog’s attribution of “author” is at odds with the Foucauldian discursive comprehension of the role of an “author.” Originality/value – One of the main assets of this paper is the combination of Foucauldian discourse analysis with phenomenological analysis for the study of the “author.” The authors turned to Foucauldian discourse analysis to discover the loci of power in the interactions of the public with the named authorial entities. The authors also looked to phenomenological analysis to consider the lived experience of users who encounter the same named authorial entities. The study of the “author” in this combined way facilitated the revelation of new aspects of the role of authorship in search engines and library catalogs.
Journal of Documentation
What is an author now? Discourse analysis applied to the idea of an author
Daniel Martínez-Ávila Richard Smiraglia Hur-Li Lee Melodie Fox
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Daniel Martínez-Ávila Richard Smiraglia Hur-Li Lee Melodie Fox , (2015),"What is an author now?
Discourse analysis applied to the idea of an author", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 71 Iss 5 pp. 1094
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What is an author now?
Discourse analysis applied
to the idea of an author
Daniel Martínez-Ávila
Information Science, São Paulo State University, Marilia,
São Paulo, Brazil, and
Richard Smiraglia, Hur-Li Lee and Melodie Fox
School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss and shed light on the following questions: What is
an author? Is it a person who writes? Or, is it, in information, an iconic taxonomic designation (some
might say a classification) for a group of writings that are recognized by the public in some
particular way? What does it mean when a search engine, or catalog, asks a user to enter the name of
an author? And how does that accord with the manner in which the data have been entered in
association with the names of the entities identified with the concept of authorship?
Design/methodology/approach The authors use several cases as bases of phenomenological
discourse analysis, combining as best the authors can components of eidetic bracketing (a Husserlian
technique for isolating noetic reduction) with Foucauldian discourse analysis. The two approaches are
not sympathetic or together cogent, so the authors present them instead as alternative explanations
alongside empirical evidence. In this way the authors are able to isolate components of iconic
authorshipand then subsequently engage them in discourse.
Findings An authoris an iconic name associated with a class of works. An authoris a role in
public discourse between a set of works and the culture that consumes them. An authoris a role in
cultural sublimation, or a power broker in deabstemiation. An authoris last, if ever, a person
responsible for the intellectual content of a published work. The library catalogs attribution of
authoris at odds with the Foucauldian discursive comprehension of the role of an author.
Originality/value One of the main assets of this paper is the combination of Foucauldian discourse
analysis with phenomenological analysis for the study of the author.The authors turned to
Foucauldian discourse analysis to discover the loci of power in the interactions of the public with the
named authorial entities. The authors also looked to phenomenological analysis to consider the lived
experience of users who encounter the same named authorial entities. The study of the authorin this
combined way facilitated the revelation of new aspects of the role of authorship in search engines and
library catalogs.
Keywords Search engines, Catalogues, Epistemology, Postmodernism
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction: just what is an author?
We begin with a question, just what is an author? Is it a person who writes? Or, is it, in
information, an iconic taxonomic designation (some might say a classification) for a
group of writings that are recognized by the public in some particular way? Barthess
(1968) The Death of the Authorand Foucaults (1984) response, What is an Author,
are considered pivotal moments that dismantled the authority of the author-figure.
Foucaults view of the author function will be discussed in detail later, but it is
instructive to briefly review relevant developments in Western literature and literary
criticism that led up to the exchange between Barthes and Foucault. Generally, and
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 71 No. 5, 2015
pp. 1094-1114
© Emerald Group PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-05-2014-0068
Received 11 May 2014
Revised 20 December 2014
Accepted 17 February 2015
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
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perhaps simplistically, a long line stretches from Aristotle to the twentieth century,
during which it would appear that unity existed among the major approaches to
literary criticism that offered a combination of contextually-based analyses: social,
historical, biographical, and the content based: morality and psychology of characters
and, of course, author. These approaches typically relied on author intention and
biography to critique text, which lent credence to the concept of the author-as-
authority. Though the primacy of the author has persisted, a few schools of thought
rejected any consideration of the author in favor of the work or the reader or a
combination. AristotlesPoetics, a response to PlatosRepublic, set the stage for the
opposition of author or authority to work or words and eventually led to the twentieth-
century context in which Foucault attempted to break down the opposition by drawing
out the complexity and interrelationship of both authorand work.These work- and
reader-driven movements had a range of goals, from professionalizing the act of
criticism to making the analysis of literary works seem scientific (i.e. formal, rigorous,
and synthetic), to acknowledging the readers role in the act of reading; the authors role
or function is a central theme in each.
1.1 Writersconceits: examples of examples of how the authorship role changed
Writers, too, have sought to hide or destabilize their authorial roles for a range of
reasons, many of them commercial or political, such as evading retribution for
adopting an unpopular line; exacting retribution from others; avoiding the overuse of a
single persona; coyness; true diffidence; shame (e.g. academics writing pulp fiction);
gender; emolument; safety(Henige, 2009, p. 33). However, some had academic or
theological reasons for transferring the authority elsewhere. One often-used conceit is
the found object.For example, Tolkien proclaimed himself a mere translator of the
Red Book of WestmarchBilbo Bagginss diary which became the Lord of the
Rings cycle (1954-1956). Another similar device is the channeling of the divine, such
as Milton as the prophet in Paradise Lost, or any number of works labeled as
spirit writingsin twentieth-century North American library catalogs. Philosopher
Søren Kierkegaard, writing in the mid-nineteenth century, published under multiple
pseudonyms and used tricks he called indirect communicationto transfer the
authorof the reading experience to the reader. He simultaneously published works
from jarringly different perspectives on the same topic, aiming to sever the reliance of
the reader on the authority of the author and on the received wisdom of the community.
The reader was to be forced to take individual responsibility for knowing who s/he is
and for knowing where s/he stands on the existential, ethical and religious issues raised
in the texts(McDonald, 2012). In the cases of Tolkien and Milton and others like them,
the authority is transferred to an external source, with the writer as a conduit for a
greater authority. Kierkegaard, however, wanted the reader to shed contextual bias to
objectively analyze the issue at hand.
1.2 Criticism
Several critical viewpoints competed through the twentieth century. Extrinsic
considerations of authorship such as history, biography, and politics were wholly
rejected by the Formalist movement early in the century. Formalists disregarded all but
the work itself and concentrated on the poetic form, grammar, and structure, analyzed
through close readings of texts. A constellation of early-to-mid-century writers and
critics now loosely called a subgroup of Formalists emerged called the New Critics.
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The group drew its name from a 1941 book by John Crowe Ransom entitled The New
Criticism, but little commonality held the group together, other than a de-emphasis of
the author in favor of the work. The New Critics were responding to such legacies as
Wordsworths (poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility) or Freuds early work
(writers rely on childhood fantasies) that attach importance to the psychology of the
author. T.S. Eliot is often included as a New Critic, though mostly in influence. In 1920,
he argued for objectivityin criticism, thus making it a more scientificanalysis of
the words on the page. Similar to academic or scientific work, he insisted that the poet
know, understand, and sacrifice the self to the full poetic tradition, and that each poem
should acknowledge and position itself within that history. The work itself and its
relationship to the poetic tradition was crucial: The progress of an artist is a continual
self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality(Eliot, 1920, p. 433). Eliot
acknowledged objections that his doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition
(pedantry),yet just as in academic or scientific work, the previous work must be
visited and known in order to position ones own work. In sum, what Eliot proposes is
that each work (not author) fits into and changes the knowledge structure of the
existing poetic tradition.
Drawing influence from T.S. Eliot, but not agreeing with him, Ransom (1937) wrote
that Criticism must become more scientific, or precise and systematic,similarly
calling for an ontological critic,by which he meant one who disregards such
contextual information as emotional reactions, adherence to moral standards, authors
biography, and synopsis. Both Eliot and Ransom in their own ways sought to
professionalize literary criticism, Eliot to place each work in the literary tradition, and
Ransom to legitimize art as a complement to science. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn
Warren in 1938 considered author biography, paraphrase, and preconceived
interpretations substitutionsfor reading and understanding poetry, but did not
deny them as valid methods of analysis (Brooks, 1995). Similarly, Wimsatt and
Beardsley (1954) coined the term intentional fallacyto name the problem of assuming
the correctinterpretation of an artistic work corresponds with the exact intention of
the author. They argue that no feasible way of determining intentionality exists, and any
work where intention is easily discovered is likelyof inferior quality. They also coinedthe
affective fallacy,which rejected the readers response as a measure of quality.
Reader-response theory arose in direct opposition to New Criticism. Though they
shared a common focus on the text rather than author, the reader-response critics
shifted the agency of meaning-making to include the reader. Though he is typically
classified as a structuralist and semiotician, particularly in his early career, Roland
Barthes had significant influence on the reader-response movement. In The Death of the
Author (1968), Barthes writes that popular culture is tyrannically centered on the
author, his person, his life, his tastes,and that criticism is more or less an expression of
the failures of the person of the author. But instead of rejecting the Author-God
totally, as the New Critics would, he believes that a texts unity lies not in its origin but
in its destination(pp. 146-148), meaning that authority lies in the reader. He writes,
the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture,the
multiplicity of meanings brought together in the act of reading.
Reader-response critics, too, saw the text and reader interacting to create meaning,
rather than meaning conveyed through a one-way conduit originating with the author.
How reader-responseis defined varies; some considered it individual, some collective,
and some considered meaning static and some dynamic. Overall, however, reader-
response critics considered a textan invention of the readers mind, rather than an
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object to decode to find the realmeaning intended by the author. Well-known figures
include David Bleich, who saw literature as an opportunity for readers to learn about
themselves; transactionalcritics such as Wolfgang Iser and Louise Rosenblatt; Stanley
Fish, most known for his work, Is There a Text in This Class? (1980); and psychological
critics such as Norman Holland, who was associated with cognitive theory.
Foucault, then, discussed the death and replacement of the authorfor other concepts
such as writingor work.For Foucault, however, a major problem with the concept of
a work for this purpose was its own definition. Foucault wondered what is a work? []
Is it not what an author has written?(Foucault, 1984, p. 103), fixing its link to the author
and thus revealing the impossibility of this replacement or dissociation. In Foucaults
thesis, the problem with the definition of a work is the unity to designate it: rough drafts,
plans for aphorisms, deleted passages, end notes, references, marginalia, and even a
laundry list might be part of someones work, or not (and not precisely anyonesinhis
example, but no less than Nietzsches). For Foucault, the unity of a work, the definition of
aworkamid the millions of traces left by someone,would be as problematic as the
authors individuality (Foucault, 1984, p. 103). These problems, in the catalog, might be
translated tothe process of representation of works and retrieval of authors, as well as to
the problem of the representation of a work by its author in those cases in which not
everything represented by the author might be useful to define the work.
2. Methodology: phenomenological discourse analysis
Our method is simple. We use cases that we have studied before, but here we use them
as bases of phenomenological discourse analysis, combining as best we can components
of eidetic bracketing (a Husserlian technique for isolating noetic reduction) with
Foucauldian discourse analysis. The two approaches are not sympathetic or together
cogent, so we present them instead as alternative explanations alongside empirical
evidence. In this way we are able to isolate components of iconic authorshipand then
subsequently engage them in discourse. In this way we are able to reveal a fuller
conceptualization of the role of authors, built from both perspectives, as fundamental
concepts in information discourse.
The application of Foucauldian discourse analysis in library and information science
(LIS) has been presented in Frohmann (1992, 1994a, b, 2001), Budd and Raber (1996),
Budd (2006), Radford (2003), Radford and Radford (2005) and Haider and Bawden (2007)
among others. For John Budd, a considerable portion of the work that is done in LIS can
benefit from discourse analysis as research method(Budd, 2006, p. 65). Haider and
Bawden state that although discourse analysis has some tradition in LIS research, it has
only recently become more visible and more frequently used as a tool or framework
(Haider and Bawden, 2007, p. 540). Marike Finlay also provided a description of discourse
analysis that was used in LIS by Bernd Frohmann (1992,1994a): the study of the way in
which an object or idea, any object or idea, is taken up by various institutions and
epistemological positions, and of the way in which those institutions and positions treat
it. Discourse analysis studies the way in which objects or ideas are spoken about
(Finlay, 1987, p. 2), In this vein, we use a Foucauldian framework to study how the role of
the author is treated by institutions and authors in different moments such as the Seven
Epitomes in China, Panizzis cataloging rules in the nineteenth century in the Western
tradition, and, as a timeline maturity of a globalized culture, Google and other
representational tools in the current world wide web for both Abelard, as an author, and
Julia ChildsThe French Chef, as an the example of a superwork with secondary texts
that should be connectedby the author.
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Other relevant discourse analyses and studies on discourses that have been
published in the LIS literature include: Haider and Bawden (2007), applying
Foucauldian discourse analysis to deconstruct the notion of information povertyas it
emerged in LIS and to examine how it results in the objectification of the information
pooras a group; Cox (2007), studying the discourse of web management in UK higher
education; Špiranec and Zorica (2010), using descriptive analysis of contrasting
features of library user education, information literacy and information literacy 2.0 to
determine whether the concept of literacy 2.0 is hype or discourse refinement, Nahl
(2007), using a discourse analysis technique for analyzing text, speech, or dialog
produced by people when discussing their information behaviors in context and
introducing the domain interaction discourse analysis; Talja et al. (1997), López-Huertas
(1997) and Nielsen (2001) applying discourse analysis to the construction of thesauri.
According to Nielsen the difference between the three approaches is that: Talja et al.
(1997) used the methodology to extract and classify the usersvocabulary and López-
Huertas (1997) to structure the vocabulary of a thesaurus. Both used the methodology
of discourse analysis to gain semantic knowledge to analyze and structure the
vocabulary, and therefore have another focus compared to the present study which
uses discourse analysis at a more abstract level to gain insight into the context
of information retrieval(p. 777). Brewster et al. (2012), apply discourse analysis to
evidence-based practice and self-help bibliotherapy in connection with healthcare
policy. These authors use linguistic approaches to critical discourse analysis (CDA),
such as Wetherell et al. (2001a, b) and Fairclough (2009), and actor network theory, an
approach to examine longitudinal shifts in policy and practice; Kouper (2010), applying
a combination of discourse and content analysis of information about the synthesis of
life forms in the public sphere, also drawing from linguistics CDA approaches such as
Van Dijk (1988, 1993) and Fairclough (1992, 1995); Abrahamson and Rubin (2012),
applying it to health information behavior research (using rhetorical structure theory
and linguistics techniques); Westbrook (2007) applying discourse analysis to examine
the syntactic and content markers of formality levels employed by both the user and
the librarian in reference chat sessions in an effort to understand the nature of the
relationship over the course of the exchange(p. 642); Heok and Luyt (2010), applying a
discourse analysis, based on a social constructivist epistemology, to internet access in
Singapores public libraries; McKenzie (2003), reporting on the development of a model
that is derived from a constructionist discourse analysis of individualsaccounts of
everyday life in information seeking. The author states (p. 20) that this form of
discourse analysis (sometimes called discourse analysis in social psychology) was
developed by social psychologists (Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Potter, 1996), drawing
on several theoretical traditions and seeking to incorporate insights from a variety
of discourse analytic approaches; and Mayor and Robinson (2014), applying a
combination of bibliometric analysis, content analysis and discourse analysis to the
ways in which the gene ontology is used and maintained. Mayor and Robinson regard
discourse analysis as a specific form of content analysis, focussing on the way
in which spoken or written language is used, with the aim of analyzing in detail the way
in which ideas are treated(p. 183), and also acknowledge that the specific form of
discourse analysis used is the form of CDA devised by Fairclough.
It should be noted the variety of approaches and types of discourse analysesthat
can be found in the literature. This is probable due to the fact that, as Graham (2005)
points out, Foucault never prescribed(as in systematized) a way on how to replicate
his analyses or one must go in order for it to be authentic, something that would be
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hypocrisy of the highest form(p. 5). In general lines, several authors (e.g. Frohmann,
1994a; Taylor, 2004; Budd, 2006; Martínez-Ávila, 2012) have pointed the
acknowledgment of basically two big groups of discourse analyses:linguistic-
based analysis (such as conversation, which could be applied in any setting where
information professionals mediate between the universe of information and
information seekers), and culturally or socially based discursive practices (along the
lines of the analyses that Michel Foucault has conducted)(Budd, 2006, p. 65). For
instance, Taylor, following Faircloughs (2003) work for social research, also identifies
the difference between those approaches as the close attention to the linguistic features
of texts-identified as textually oriented discourse analysis(Taylor, 2004, p. 435).
Fairclough has constantly signaled the importance of textual analysis in his CDA,
although adding that it cannot solely be reduced to this: Text analysis is
correspondingly only a part of discourse analysis, which also includes analysis of
productive and interpretative processes(Fairclough, 1989, p. 24); text analysis is an
essential part of discourse analysis, but discourse analysis is not merely the linguistic
analysis of texts(Fairclough, 2003, p. 3). On the other hand, Frohmann distanced
himself from the purely linguistic approach and clarified that (u)nlike the discourse
analysis of linguists, however, which usually (though not exclusively) studies
ordinaryoral conversation, the kind of analysis described here investigates what
Dreyfus and Rabinow (1983), in their explication of Foucault, called serious speech
acts(Frohmann, 1994a, p. 120). In our case, we have also discarded most linguistic
approaches to discourse analysis for a more open and flexible combination of the
method with our phenomenological approach.
3. Case studies
In two earlier studies (Smiraglia et al., 2010, 2011), the perceptions of authorship in the
Anglo-American library cataloging tradition were examined. These studies revealed that
the author had become an iconic denominator of an alphabetico-classed system of
ordering approved texts. Elements of the Seven Epitomes and the example of Abelards
XX from Panizzis nineteenth-century cataloging rules were used in both of those studies.
A third study by Smiraglia and Lee (2012) added the case of The French Chef for
the purpose of extending analysis of the role of the author as iconic class denominator
in the online catalog environment. Thus the three cases presented here are those used in
the earlier studies. Smiraglia and Lee (2012, p. 36) itemized the cases thusly:
the first documented imperial library catalogue, the Seven Epitomes (Qilue []),
in China;
Abelards Works, which featured prominently in the 1848 testimony of Antonio
Panizzi concerning the British Museum catalogue, a bellwether development; and
The French Chef, including moving image material from the television program
hosted by Julia Child and the large family of instantiated works associated with it.
The three cases were chosen for that study as well as for the present analysis because
of their value as complex superworks. Each is the progenitor of a large class of
aggregated works, which in turn reveal contours of the diverse roles of interwoven
creators, which in turn is useful for perceiving the shifting role of authorship. Finally,
each case is itself culturally iconic in some way, which means their public perception,
represented by ample presence on the world wide web yields a large body of empirical
evidence that for discourse analysis.
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3.1 Analysis of the Seven Epitomes
We acknowledge that the study of the Seven Epitomes through Foucauldian and
phenomenological lenses might run the risk of interpretive errors due to the possible
imposition of epistemologies of different cultures in the analysis. Foucault, when
wondering how one characterizes a discourse containing the author function or in what
way this discourse is different from other discourses, preceded his questions with in
our culture(Foucault, 1984, p. 108), opening the possibility of differences and
discontinuities of his analysis across cultures. Thus, to avoid these interpretive errors,
we must situate the Seven Epitomes in its original cultural context two thousand
years ago in imperial China as much as possible (Lee and Lan, 2011), and be aware of
the construction of the perception by a hypothetical Foucauldian reader of the Seven
Epitomes in our culture,which, although different from its original culture, is
acceptable and even desirable to compare and study the appearance and growth (and
shifting perceptions) of the concept of authorin different moments and cultures.
The Seven Epitomes, a classified library catalog, was the end product of a collation
project that salvaged and organized the dynastic library (Lee and Lan, 2009). The
collators followed the authorship principle when they compared different versions,
sorted disintegrated slats and eliminated duplicates, and finalized each book. As a
result, many works included in the catalog were constructed anthologies that
comprised short pieces sharing the same authorship, genre, or theme. In numerous
cases, texts by the same author were gathered into a single book whose title often
included the authors name (Lee, 2012), apparently strengthening the link between the
work and the author.
Foucault (1984, p. 107) wrote:
The authors name is not simply an element in a discourse (capable of being either subject or
object, of being replaced by a pronoun, and the like); it performs a certain role with regard to
narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function. Such a name permits one to group
together a certain number of texts, define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to
others. In addition, it establishes a relationship among the texts.
In the Seven Epitomes, the usual inclusion of the authors name in the title of a work
might suggest a reinforcement of the role of the author and its classificatory function.
However, the concept of the author in the catalog is not being used as an access point
or organizing criterion for information retrieval. As explained elsewhere (Lee, 2012),
the catalog presents only one structuring and retrieval method by the given
classification. The identity of the person of the author, which establishes the authority
of the authors name iconically, does not affect the catalogs overall structure nor can it
be used for searching.
As the only retrieval mechanism in the catalog, the classification is predominantly a
ranking system of classicist (also known as Confucian) moral values (Smiraglia and
Lee, 2012). This ideology and ranking system of moral values affects not only the forces
driving the development of the system but also the perceptions by users and their
constructions of the concept of the author,through the inclusion and omission of
information about the authors, the criteria for the application of the author function in
the gathering of texts under the unit of a work, and, most importantly, in the structure.
In the classified catalog, Confucius is elevated above all other masters when two works
he has authored,The Analects (Lunyu) and The Book of Filial Piety (Xiaojing), are
included in the foremost class rather than being mixed in with other mastersworks in
the second class (Lee, 2012). Indeed, the role of Confucius in these works might be far
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from that of a traditional author.The Analects is an anthology of Confucius
teachings that was compiled and edited by his students after his death. In spite of the
credit given to Confucius for being the compiler of other works such as The Odes
(Shijing), those students of his who compiled the Analects are unnamed in the catalog
(Smiraglia and Lee, 2012). Neither the omission of the students nor the elevation of
Confucius seems to be happenstance here; these acts seem deliberate for the following
reasons: first, three basic types of authorship have been recognized in the Seven
Epitomes: composer of the text, transmitter, and editor-compiler (Smiraglia et al., 2011);
second, Confucius has famously described himself as the faithful transmitter of
classical texts, not an author (Confucius, 1983). Thus, it can be reiterated that the
classification of the Seven Epitomes played a significant role in proclaiming and
maintaining classicism as the intellectual authority and, in the meantime, other
writings that deviated from classicist ideals(Lee and Lan, 2011, p. 40).
The placement of the authors name in a title and of biographical information about
the author in an annotation might be seen as acts of restitution of the work to the
author, perhaps the birth of the discourse. This information about the entities of
authors in relation to the entities of works might also be seen as a closer step to the
Foucault-inspired model presented by Budd and Moulaison (2012) that extends
beyond the attributes of a person, a human being who lives in a certain place at a
certain time and who has other identifiable attributes(Moulaison et al., 2013, p. 3;
Moulaison et al., 2014, p. 3). While in Western traditional knowledge organization
systems used in libraries, information about attributes of authors has been and remains
hidden from patrons, the inclusion of information about the author in the Seven
Epitomes might be a step in the opposite direction.
Foucault argued that using a proper noun as a reference means that it cannot be
turned into a simple reference; it is: more than an indication, a gesture, a finger
pointed at someone, it is the equivalent of a description(Foucault, 1984, p. 105). Here,
accepting classicism, the catalogers act as the main strategies of control shaping the
concept of the author. It thus would be possible to infer that if some of the personal
features described in the biography of Confucius or others in the catalog were
exaggerated or even nonexistent, the link between the proper noun, which is a
personsnameandthedesignatedpersonwouldnot be modified at all. However, if
some of the features related to the link between author and work were manipulated or
demonstrated to be false (e.g. if a student had changed the whole meaning of a
teaching to preserve the unity of the discourse) that would not only alter the link
between the authors name and what it implies by what it describes in the catalog, but
should also modify the function of the authors name (e.g. Would Confucius be
Confucius without his moral values?). However, due to the overriding force of the
structure and the strategies of control that shape it, even if the descriptions were
changed and rectified according to this new finding, only if the transformation
modifies the systems structure would there be a real influence on peoples
perceptions about the status of the work. Does it really matter whether Laozi, the
author, existed or not? Is Laozi more important than the Dao de jing, said to be written
by Laozi, in an intellectual lineage-driven system? This seems to contradict, at least in
the Western modern tradition, the first characteristic of the author functionfor
Foucault: discourses are objects of appropriation(Foucault, 1984, p. 108). On the
other hand, it is important to highlight here the revealed importance of the strategies
of control in the system as the main forces capable of modifying and shaping the
authority and meaning of the author in relation to a work through the structure of the
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system and independently of the a priori Foucault-friendly descriptions of the Seven
Epitomes (thus revealing the system to be very un-Foucauldian indeed).
The second characteristic of the author functionfor Foucault is that the author
function does not affect all discourses in a universal and constant way(Foucault, 1984,
p. 109). Foucault shows how the concept of the author has affected different types of
texts (literary, scientific, etc.) in different moments, resulting in different perceptions of
their value. In the case of the Seven Epitomes this characteristic might be linked to the
structure of the system and the different perceptions of different types of works
according to their authorsmoral values, as well as the function of the types. The
catalogs introductory passages, for instance, insists that poetry in the Epitome of
Lyrics and Rhapsodies is considered inferior to that in the poetic Classic, the Odes,
because of the deprived status of their authors and the loss of political functions at
court of this type of poetry (Connery, 1998). Therefore, the function of the author affects
the perceptions of the discourse only according to the ruling system of values and
strategies of control organizing the different types and authors in the structure, and not
in a uniform and homogeneous horizontal way.
The third characteristic of the author functionfor Foucault 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(Foucault, 1984, p. 110). For Foucault, the construction of the authordiffers
for a poet and for a philosophical author; similarly, for him, the construction of a
novelist was different in the eighteenth century from that in the twentieth century.
However, as Foucault also pointed out, certain constants are evident in the rules of
author construction through the ages and across societies. I am supposing that in
every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and
redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its
powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome
materiality(Foucault, 1972, p. 216). These rules, at least in the western world, seem to
be derived from how the Christian tradition authenticated or rejected the texts.
In order to rediscoveran author in a work, modern criticism uses methods similar to
those that Christian exegesis employed when trying to prove the value of a text by its
authors saintliness(Foucault, 1984, p. 110). One example is the failed attempt of
sanctification of Confucius by the Jesuits. Bergua (1969) explains how Jesuit
missionaries of the seventeenth century in China became amazed by the wisdom and
moral superiority of the work of Confucius, so they proposed his inclusion among the
Churchs saints by the Pope. Although disregarded by the Pope, the suggestion to
sanctify Confucius was an attempt to authenticate the value of his work. And here,
instead of rediscoveringan author by proving the value of the text by its authors
saintliness, the missionaries attempted to create the value of the text by making
Confucius a saint. In other words, it was the reconstruction of an author to authenticate
a work that was previously recognized by experience, the continuation of a previous
discourse. The perception of Confucius by the Jesuits, once they had lived experiences
in China, was different from the Popes, who had no lived experience of him. However,
the attempt to sanctify Confucius seems to be an alternative device for the construction
of the perception for those who have no lived experience, as though the lived experience
by others during the process and approval of sanctification was able to replace ones
lived experience in the construction of the author.
In the case of the Seven Epitomes, that authors saintliness mentioned by Foucault
might be equivalent to how the authors moral values and intellectual lineage develop
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the author function. To the Chinese, an authors life and scholarly pedigree establishes
intellectual authority, and the intellectual lineage is so important that it is used in a
classified approach to organize entries. The catalogers convey the message that the
authority and meaning of a text come from its author(s) just as the catalogers establish
a structure and rhetoric to influence reading of individual texts (Smiraglia et al., 2010).
In a circular way, the moral values of the author shape the authority of the work, i.e. its
value, while the moral values governing the structure of the system (supposedly
reflecting the values of the authors) will shape the construction of the author that will
eventually mark a place in the structure (i.e. making the author valuable).
Consequently, it seems obvious that the key factor in determining the values of the
system, and thus the perception of the authors, is a third type of external authority that
affects the construction and transformation of the concept. In the case of Foucault, the
drive of this authority was exemplified by the values of the Christian exegesis, while in
the case of the Seven Epitomes these would be the strategies of control instigated by the
political institutions and exerted by the catalogerspractices.
Other examples of analogies between the Christian exegesis described by Foucault
and the construction of the concept of the authorin the Seven Epitomes can also be
found in some of the annotations of the catalog. In this vein, Foucault (1984, p. 111)
relates how in the Christian tradition Saint Jerome proposed four criteria to determine
whether one is dealing with one or several individuals in relation to a discourse (or, in
other words, the unity of a discourse):
(1) If among several books attributed to an author one is inferior to the others, it must be
withdrawn from the list of the authors works (the author is therefore defined as a constant level
of value); (2) the same should be done if certain texts contradict the doctrine expounded in the
authors other works (the author is thus defined as a field of Conceptual or theoretical
coherence); (3) one must also exclude works that are written in a different style, containing
words and expressions not ordinarily found in the writers production (the author is here
conceived as a stylistic unity); (4) finally, passages quoting statements that were made or
mentioning events that occurred after the authors death must be regarded as interpolated texts
(the author is here seen as a historical figure at the cross-roads of a certain number of events).
In the Seven Epitomes, similar criteria seem to be followed by the catalogers when, for
instance, they express doubt about authorship. In some cases the annotation of an
entry asserts that the given writing was not in the style of the claimed period and in
other cases it repudiates an authorship attribution to a renowned ancient figure by
pointing out the inferior quality of the writing (implying inferior morality) (Lee, 2012).
In the first case, those annotations would fit Saint Jeromes criteria 2 and 4, while in
the second case they would fit criteria 1 and 3. It has also been acknowledged that the
catalog provided guidance by offering authoritative opinions through interpretive
commentaries. This aspect would also clearly fit Saint Jeromes 4th criterion.
3.2 Analysis of Abelards works
While in the case of the ancient China it has been shown that the author already played
an important role in both scientificand literary texts (although not in a Foucauldian
way, for the purpose of our discourse analysis we might set that moment as the
appearance of the discourse in that culture), in the Western world the importance of the
authorial role in literature has been steadily gaining relevance since the seventeenth
century: Now, we demand of all those narratives, poems, dramas and comedies which
circulated relatively anonymously throughout the middle ages, whence they come, and
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we virtually insist they tell us who wrote them(Foucault, 1972, p. 222). It should be
added that, in the modern days, we insist that they tell us through information
represented in catalogs perhaps revealing a relationship between constraints and the
emergence and growth of the discourse. We have used the complete works of Aberlard
as a case in our analysis of the meaning of authorship because the editions extant in the
mid-nineteenth century played a prominent role in the development of Anthony
Panizzis cataloging rules for the printed catalog of the library at the British Museum
(see Panizzi 1848/1985). Our most extensive explication occurs in Smiraglia and
Lee (2012). Foucault said that the authors name should not simply be an element in
a discourse, but also perform a certain role with regard to narrative discourse assuring
a classificatory function, permitting one to group together a certain number of texts,
define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to others, and establish
a relationship among the texts (Foucault, 1984). This after all is the function an authors
name plays in a library catalog in the Anglo-American tradition that can be traced from
Panizzi. The authors name does not serve to characterize any certain mode of being
of discourse as expressed by Foucault; rather the author as person is dispossessed
from the works classed under the authors name, and the name therefore is confined
to a guardian function of keeping the group of works together and in order.
In Smiraglia and Lee (2012) we showed how the name of Abelard was used
by Panizzi to form a class named ABÆLARDUS, with a division titled Opera
(i.e. works) which was populated by the editions extant in Panizzis library. The
point is, the publications populating this class might contain text written by Abelard,
but they also contain text written to and about Abelard. The name is not so much an
indicationofattributionasitisaniconicidentifier of a class of related classical
works. Instead of the Foucauldian function of the authorsnameasalinktothe
persons intellectual responsibility through the descriptions, here we see the use of a
proper noun as a label for a class of instantiations. Under the alphabetically arranged
class of Abelard,the intellectual responsibility and descriptions of other authors
participating in those works (such as his ill-fated companion Heloise and the
commentaries by Duchesne used in the examples) are even silenced and confused
with regard to their roles as authors.
The first of the current retrieval tools for which we are going to test the
representation of Abelard as an author is Google, the world wide web search engine par
excellence in the Western world and perhaps the culmination of a dream of
homogeneity of discourses and continuities across cultures in a post-colonial world
(and specially with the non-profitable geo-local-customization of the representation of
authors and works). A quick and simple Google search for Abelardretrieves an
object in the results page that includes a small piece of biographical information (under
the name of Pierre Abelárd) and five books attributed to him. When the links for any of
these books are clicked, the user is referred to a results page that is the equivalent to a
Google search for that specific book. That page also gathers other books by the same
author. These eight books are the same books that are linked in the case of Abelard if
we click on books(or search for pierre abélard books,since Google refers the users
to its equivalent page), although in this case the information about any specific book is
replaced in the biographical information. Of the gathered books, one, Forbidden Fruit:
from the letters of Abelard and Heloise is said to be authored (according to Google) by
Pierre Abélard and Heloise, although it should be noted that Googles first result on the
page, Amazon.com, includes one more author, Radice. The only other book that
appears listed by Google as authored by Pierre Abélard and Heloise is The Letters and
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Other Writings. The rest of the Pierre Abélardbooks linked by Google, (The Letters
of Abelard and Heloise (1978),Ethical Writings: His Ethics or Know Yourselfand His
Dialogue Between a Philosopher, a Jew, And a Christian, Distoria Calamitatum The
Story of My Misfortunes,Letters of Peter Abelard, Beyond the Personal,The Love Letters
of Abelard and Heloise, and The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise The Original
Classic Edition some of these are instantiations of a previously listed work) only
include Pierre Abélard as the author, omitting every other mention of responsibility
even in the flagrant cases of several editions of The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise.
In this case, although the relationship between the author and works is established
(including only a selection of works and mixing different instantiations), the inaccuracy
of the biographical information about the author in relation to the works and other
important people in his life, e.g., Heloise, restricts a Foucault-friendly representation
and perception of the author.
Another web resource is Freebase, the large collaborative knowledge base that was
initially developed by Metaweb and later acquired by Google. A Freebase search for
Abelardretrieves a record in which Pierre Abelárd, Philosopher (as he is identified in
the search box with the help of a brief excerpt from the Wikipedia) appears more
characterized as a topic than as an author. As of March 2014, there are 80 sources that
Freebase lists as topic equivalent pages for this record, including NNDB/people, the
Virtual International Authority File (VIAF), several language variations of Wikipedia,
Musicbrainz (that states that Peter Abelards works are Troubadour Songs and
Medieval Lyrics (Paul Hillier, Stephen Stubbs and Lena-Liis Kiesel), Medieval Carols,
Joan of Arc: Musical Revelations and Music from the Time of the Crusades),
Openlibrary.org/authors, and the Library of Congress Name Authority File (under the
entry Abelard, Peter, pp. 1079-1142). However, despite all of this biographical
information in the sources (also translated to the complete biographical information
about him in the People-Personfield), the structure of the Freebase database does not
prevent this author, designated by the name Pierre Abélard En (in English)in the
record, from being treated more as an object than as a subject (i.e. a person who
authors). In the Freebase record, the Books-Works written about this topicfield
seems to mix books written by Abelard and about Abelard, as it is evidenced by the
inclusion of Forbidden Fruit: from the letters of Abelard and Heloise (that however
acknowledges Pierre Abélard, Heloise expressed just as in Google as the authors of
the book) and Heloise & Abelard: a new biography by James Burge. On the other hand,
the Media-Author-Works-writtenfield seems to be the only device in the Freebases
structure that gives insight about the relationship between the author and the work.
However, as of August 2013, in the case of Peter Abélard, his field only showed one
book written by this author, the aforementioned Forbidden Fruit: from the letters of
Abelard and Heloise published in 2007, which also deceives the classificatory function
in addition to the description of the author that was expressed by Foucault (1984). By
March 2014, this field had added six more books: The Letters of Abelard and Heloise,
The Letters and Other Writings,Letters of Peter Abelard, Beyond the Personal,
Hymnarius Paraclithensis, and Peter Abelard: Opera), arguably including several
instances of the same work (Letters).
Finally, the VIAF record for Abelard also shows some minor biographical
information about Abelard, essentially in the field About,including gender,
nationality, and languages. The relationship between Abelard and his works might be
potentially traced to two fields: Uniform Title Linksand Selected Titles.In the
Uniform Title Linksfield, every collective title of an instantiation of a text that is
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supposed to have been authored by Abelard seems to be listed under the heading
Works. The use of the word workshere seems to be misleading, since there is more
than one signifying, concrete set of ideational conceptions that finds realization
through semantic or symbolic expression(Smiraglia, 2001, p. 129), in fact, no fewer
than 29 works are listed here and only five of these works have expressions, four of
them have one expression and only one has two expressions. Thus this particular
gathering by worksand expressionsis deceptive to the relationship between an
author and the work in a Foucauldian sense as well. On the other hand, in the Selected
titlesfield, the number of occurrences of titles is not reduced to works, as one might
have hoped, but a few titles are listed in the form of several language variants
(expressions), such as Correspondencia and Letters. In this vein, the perception of a user
looking for information about Abelards work in VIAF will also be transformed and
shaped according to the structure and selection of information of VIAF.
In summary, Panizzis rules and the example of Abelards work seem to be perfect
examples for the revealing of the author as a concept defectively constructed as an
iconic class symbol, and contrary to the Foucauldian sense of its functions. In the case
of Panizzis rules, the institutions affecting the construction of the author, as something
contrary to a person who writes a book, are revealed to be the practices promoted by as
the main strategy of control of books. The use of these rules with the main purpose of
an alphabetical arrangement also brought a side effect that was the arrangement of
works under a string of characters designating an author. As a consequence of this,
there has been a transformation of the concept of the author from the name of a person
to a string of characters that has been continued to the present, continually shaping
perception by users and hiding features in relation to the intellectual responsibility and
the function of the person as author.
3.3 Analysis of The French Chef
The French Chef was an iconic public television cooking show that was aired from 1963
to 1973. In spite of its limited budget, The French Chef showed increasing and
impressive production values every season, including some pioneer practices such as
the now ubiquitous (on food television) overhead camera shot that could demonstrate
the action of a cooks hands or in a pot. Some of the original credits of the show featured
music by John Morris, production by Russell Morash or Ruth Lockwood, and direction
by several other people, including John Morash. As success drove the increasingly
sophisticated development of episodes, more people contributed to the intellectual
responsibility of the production. It was thoroughly, as a series, a work of shared
multiple contributions, and in no way a work of authorship. In addition, there are other
instantiations of progenitor or related works that directly preceded and succeeded The
French Chef. On the one hand, the origins of the television program seemed to be rooted
in the best-selling book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, written by Julia Child
together with Simone Beck and Louissette Bertholle, published in 1961. On the other
hand, some of the contents of the program were captured subsequently in The French
Chef Cookbook, published in 1968 at the middle of the programs life-span, written by
Julia Child and including illustrations by her husband Paul Child. Since some of the text
passages from Mastering the Art of French Cooking were reused in The French Chef
Cookbook, and, of course, the format of the latter closely followed the recorded episodes
of the television show. Thus there is a semantic and ideational relationship among all
three progenitorworks. There also are other more distantly related works such as the
2009 motion picture Julie & Julia, directed by Nora Ephron, and even the famous 1978
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Saturday Night Live skits by Dan Aykroyd that also, arguably, share some semantic
and ideational content. Finally, for each node of this superwork set there are other sets
of instantiations too, including translations, digitizations and other texts, that, although
all share a connection with Julia Child as catalyst, also show a diversity of attributions
and new practices.
From a phenomenological perspective, it is acknowledged that the lived experience
of individuals encountering this family of works might incorporate different
perceptions of the aforementioned instantiations, rendering the perception of
authorship in this case at the very least diffuse. For example, for somebody who was
only familiar with the television program, the related cookbooks Mastering the Art
of French Cooking and The French Chef Cookbook might be perceived as subsidiary
works based on the progenitor television program The French Chef.Insucha
potential perception, the perceived adaptation from television program to book,
however fictional, might be regarded as defining the authorial responsibility of Julia
Child only for marketing. In such a case (however far-fetched), the authorsname
would function primarily for marketing, and not for intellectual attribution. However,
for somebody who had encountered Mastering the Art of French Cooking before
watching The French Chef, the television program probably might be perceived as an
adaptation from book to television, and probably this perception would not change
until this person experienced the program and witnessed the degree of involvement
and role of Julia Child as hostess, teacher, and chef. In every possible case involving
lived experience as interaction with the nodes of the superwork, the role of Julia
Child might seem to vary. Foucault also talked about this, about prior experience
(or originating experience) as a manner of eliding the reality of discourse (Foucault,
1972, p. 228). He also added that: a primary complicity with the world (recognition)
founds, for us, a possibility of speaking of experience, in it, to designate and name
it, to judge it and, finally, to know it in the form of truth(p. 228). This variation
of the perception of Julia Child as author, or originator, is also susceptible to
transformation in knowledge organization systems, depending on the description
and representation of the works, their attributions, the way they designate
them, name them, and judge them, and the representation and function of Julia Child
in relation to this discourse.
Regarding this, Foucault (1984, p. 113 ff.) raised the following questions:
What place does a named concept occupy in discourse?
Does authordeprive the concept of its role as originator of discourse?
Is not an author a functional principle by which culture limits, excludes, and
chooses?
Is not an authorthe founder of discursivity?
For Foucault, authors as founders of discursivity would be very different from, for
instance, a novelist, who is simply the writer of a text. Rather, founders of discursivity
are exemplified by Freud and Marx, who are not just the authors of The interpretation
of dreams or jokes and their relation to the unconsciousand the Communist Manifesto
or Das Kapital, but indeed they both have established an endless possibility of
discourse.By no means we are trying to suggest that the importance and role of Julia
Childs discourse or that French cooking must be situated at the same level as Freuds
and Marxs, or that she started the discourse of cooking as a science or that her style of
cooking is equivalent to the founding of a field.
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However, besides these differences, in the current www representation it is clear that
there might be some useful analogies between the case of the superwork of The French
Chef and what Foucault was talking about in his examples about starting discursivity,
and hence the justification of this case for analysis. First, in spite of the arguable
similarities between the establishment of the Gothic novel characteristics and the
innovation of practices such as the overhead camera shot in cooking programs, the case
of Julia Child would not be the same as in the counter-example of Ann Radcliffe used by
Foucault (1984). The main difference here seems to be that The French Chef did not
only allow other similar programs to be developed, but also served to derive other
unrelated works, while other Gothic novels by other writers hardly can be considered
works derived from Ann Radcliffe. This leads to the second analogy, as in the case of
Marx and Freud, Julia Childs discourse might have made possible not only a certain
number of analogies, but also (and equally important) a certain number of differences
(Foucault, 1984, p. 114), while at the same time it gathered all those different works and
instantiations under the same superwork in a classificatory fashion. Here, it would be
hard to justify the addition of the Ann Radcliffes authorship or even attribution in
every Gothic novel written since hers.
Although Foucault predominantly talks about discourses in science, there might be
more similarities between Julia ChildsThe French Chef and the initiations of discursive
practices by Marx and Freud than between Julia Child and the founding of any
scientific endeavor, such as Cuviers and Saussures. For Foucault, one of the main
differences between them would be that unlike the founding of a science, the initiation
of a discursive practice does not participate in its later transformations(Foucault,
1984, p. 114). This point might be analogously considered for examples such as the Julie
& Julia movie and the Saturday Night Live skits, because, rather than just showing
some formal and technical resemblances, they also share semantic and ideational
contents with The French Chef. However, it has to be noted here that Foucault
recognized that It is not always easy to distinguish between the two; moreover,
nothing proves that they are two mutually exclusive procedures(Foucault, 1984,
p. 117). Also, we recognize that the characteristics of the example of The French Chef
might not strictly parallel the examples used by Foucault. However, the use of a
Foucauldian framework for the analysis of The French Chef seems to be justified by the
purpose and bigger scope of the analysis itself, that in our case it is to show the
intrinsicalities of the author function in a class of instantiations. As Foucault stated,
I have attempted the distinction for only one reason: to show that the author function,
which is complex enough when one tries to situate it at the level of a book or a series of
texts that carry a given signature, involves still more determining factors when one
tries to analyze it in larger units, such as groups of works or entire disciplines
(Foucault, 1984, p. 117).
Who is the real Julia Child? Or, perhaps we should ask, what does it matter for
information retrieval, or for knowledge organization? On an empirical plane, a Google
search for Julia Child retrieves some biographical information about her and highlights
some of her main works. While as of August 2013 Google highlighted the visual display
of five books and just mentioned her role in the movie Were Back! A Dinosaur Story,an
animated movie in which she voiced the character of Dr Bleeb, as of March 2014 those
categories seem to have been reversed as five Movies and TV showsare visually
displayed and fourteen books are listed. In any case, there is no reference to the The
French Chef television program in the first results page, making palpable the concept
that the name of Julia Child, here, plays no role with regard to The French Chef or any
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other discourse. Rather, it seems that the name of Julia Child (as a string of characters)
is functioning as a designation of the person, constructed with all information gathered
from the web, but not linking this biographical description to any particular indication
of her work as something that is not ordinary everyday speech that merely comes and
goes, not something that is immediately consumable(Foucault, 1984, p. 107). The first
five books included in Julia Childs profile on the Google results page were: Mastering
the Art of French Cooking (1961), coauthored by Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle,
My Life in France (2006), coauthored by Alex Prudhomme (and also noting the
adaptation to Julie & Julia), The Way To Cook (1989), Julias Kitchen Wisdom, and Julia
Child and More Company. When clicking on the links for any of these books, we were
redirected to a new class of books called Julia Child books that expanded these five
titles to seventeen, all of them including her as an author. As of March 2014, when we
clicked on links for any of the books we are redirected to a similar page that shows the
same fourteen books. The books that have been removed since August 2013 are Julia
and Jacques Cooking at Home,The French Chef Cookbook, and From Julia Childs
Kitchen. At both moments (August 2013 and March 2014), although most of these
books note her role in The French Chef television program (through the description
field extracted from Wikipedia or Google Books), none of them shows anywhere else
this common superwork or its relationship with her as an author. In our Foucauldian
analysis, this division and exclusion (and even rejection) in the organization and
representation of works can be regarded as another system for the control and
delimitation of the discourse, in this case an internal one analogous to the internal
rules, where discourse exercises its own control; rules concerned with the principles of
classification, ordering and distribution(Foucault, 1972, p. 220). In the same page,
Foucault uses the example of a society without its major narratives, told, retold and
varied; formulae, texts, ritualized texts to be spoken in well-defined circumstances;
things said once, and conserved because people suspect some hidden secret or wealth
lies buried withinand commentaries, that can be extrapolated to the example of the
original superwork The French Chef (that perhaps it is only kept as a hook or
advertisement of derived works or perhaps it is only kept by the author function for
external eyes, an external perception). The example of Julia ChildsThe French Chef
and the model of the superwork fit with Foucaults analysis on commentaries as
secondary texts, when he states that Not a few major texts become blurred and
disappear, and commentaries sometimes come to occupy the former position. But while
the details of application may well change, the function remains the same, and the
principle of hierarchy remains at work(Foucault, 1972, p. 220). The key question here
is, does the biographical information of the author in the representation help or affect
the role of the author in the discourse and discursivity?
The biographical information about Julia Child in Freebase (Julia Child-chef, the
most complete of her profiles and as it appears characterized in the search box) is
obviously much more complete than in the case of Abelard, including aspects such as
the date and place of birth, ethnicity, parents, siblings, spouse, employment history,
education, height, places lived, and more. As for her function as an author, Julia Child
appears to be credited for the following categories: Film actor-Film performance,for
her voice for Dr Bleeb in Were Back! A Dinosaurs Story,Film story contributor-film
story credits,for Julie & Julia (that also appears listed as a film on this subject),
Person or entity appearing in film,listing twelve films in which she appears and also
showing other attributions such as the direction, Books-Literature subject-works
written about this topic,for My Life in France (written by Julia Child and Alex
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PrudHomme). Again, it should be noted here the treatment of the authors name as a
topic and not as a person), TV actor-starring TV roles,for Julia and Jacques Cooking
at Home,TV personality-TV regular appearances,for the programs The French Chef,
Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home,Cooking with Master Chefs: hosted by Julia Child,
Baking with Julia, and Julia and Jacques: More Cooking in Concert (this category
including the only appearance of The French Chef and perhaps suggesting that,
contrary to the TV actor role, in her TV regular appearances Julia Child did not have to
act or there was no script, something that degrades the perception of the authorship
role), and Media-Author,with thirteen works writtenand six book editions
published,as of August 2013, and fourteen works writtenand six book editions
published,as of March 2014. In no way is the link and role of The French Chef
television program noted in relation to the development of these or other derived works.
Finally, the VIAF record of Julia Child also includes some biographical information
about the person, although most of it can be regarded to be useful for the same
disambiguation and classification purposes that have been derived from Panizzis rules
(e.g. preferred forms (of the heading), alternate name forms, etc.). Is this person an
author? The Selected titlesfield includes many language variations of the same
work and not even representatives of instantiations of each work. In addition, The
French Chef television program, that, as it has been reasoned before, might be
considered the start of the discourse by Julia Child and superwork, still remains omitted
through the database fields. On the other hand, the only title included in the Uniform
title links-Worksfield of VIAF as a work (as of August 2013, this field is not present as
of March 2014) is Julia Child & company, that, again, is not strictly speaking a work or
informs the user of the author in regards to the start of the discursive practice. In every
of these cases, a potential user searching for information about Julia Child would not
receive useful insight about the role of Julia Child in the discursive practice or about the
importance and link of The French Chef in the whole set of works.
4. Just what is an author?
We return to our original question, just what is an author? In cataloging tradition, and
to some extent in classical bibliography, an author is foremost a named entity to whom
intellectual creativity is attributed. But also, and almost more importantly, in
cataloging and bibliographical tradition, as the discourse has been transformed to this
date, an author is the name of a class of related works that can be collocated with the
iconic representation of the named entity. We turned to Foucauldian discourse analysis
to discover the loci of power in the interactions of the public with the named authorial
entities. We also looked to phenomenological analysis to consider the lived experience
of users who encounter the same named authorial entities. The discussion leads
inexorably to the conclusion that an author is not so much a person who writes, as it is
the name of a class of works that can be related, either through power structures or
lived experience, with a specific named entity.
What does it mean when a search engine, or catalog, asks a user to enter the name of
an author? And how does that accord with the manner in which the data have been
entered in association with the names of the entities identified with the concept of
authorship? This is the crux of the question, because here is where the discontinuity is
rife. It is one thing to designate a human by name as authorbut it is another thing
entirely to generate the class of works associated with that same name.
Who are the authorsin the Seven Epitomes? Clearly, individuals named are
culturally responsible for moral authority associated with their texts. This is discourse
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at the highest level, between a people and its government. In the case study of Abelard
we see that there is also a discontinuity between the individuals named, their lived
reality, and the perceptual reality of their works as influential in spheres beyond their
own perception or intention. Perhaps this is a key, then. An authoris an iconic name
associated with a class of works. An authoris a role in public discourse between a set
of works and the culture that consumes them. An authoris a role in cultural
sublimation, or a power broker in deabstemiation. An authoris last, if ever, a person
responsible for the intellectual content of a published work. The library catalogs
attribution of authoris at odds with the Foucauldian discursive comprehension of the
role of an author.
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Corresponding author
Dr Daniel Martínez-Ávila can be contacted at: dmartinezavila@marilia.unesp.br
For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:
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This research aims to ascertain the conceptual basics underlying the design of the Seven Epitomes, the first library catalog to establish the bibliographic model in im-perial China. The analytical framework for the study consists of a reconstructed version of the catalog and its historical contexts. In analyzing the surviving text of the catalog, the study identifies its bibliographic objectives as the identification, choice, finding, and collocating objectives. Further deduced from these objectives, the study reasons out four general purposes that might be intended by the catalog's compiler Liu Xin: the catalog was to be a guide to literature, a plan for knowledge organization, a retrieval tool, and a library inventory. Ru classicism (or Confucian-ism) was the catalog's guiding philosophy. In classicism-dominated imperial China, generations of bibliographers followed this model and focused their attention pri-marily on making bibliography both a classicist guide to literature and a plan for organizing knowledge.