week (4)

It is Foucault week. And I was interested about several ideas:

I remembered when a journalist has interviewed me about my last book. And he started to ask personal questions and tried to link them with the content pretending that would help him to understand the book clearly and deeply.

Suddenly I realized that by doing this he is going to shift from analyzing and critique the essence of the book to another direction ،so I told him: do you hear about the theory: “The death of the author”? According to that theory you could try to analyse the text to understand the meanings in an abstract form away from the individual impact of the author.

Do I believe really on this? Can we isolate the text from the author? from his view, his cultural background, his rreligious conviction and his values and history? I believe that the” author “is one of the tools, which could help to understand the meanings from different perspective. While Foucault undermines the author’s influence and authority he described the Author as a function of discourse which offer him a middle position.

Reflections:

• Foucault is dealing with the author as a function of discourse. Although I believe on the influence of the author in the text , I could apply Foucault’s notion on ideas and texts which were existed in history with unknown author such as literary stories, folk tales, and traditional cultural practices. in this case we should consider the collective consciousness as the author and try to analyse its discourse which be compatible with Foucault theory.
• By viewing the cultural manifestations in my country I could assert the Dominance of the political and religious discourse in the classification and narration of the different cultural events and elements. Recently, the higher and the educated class of the society become aware of this fact which has created an intellectual and cultural conflict within the community.