In a nutshell, Foucault’s argument is that the word author is more complex than society thinks it is. In his eyes, the way we view authors is not complicated enough. He is basically saying that the author is not one thing, he is a mixture of several different components.

I understand the example’s Foucault uses to validate his point on the actual name of an author, but I’m not quite sure how that fits into his argument, or the significance of that point.

I am also a bit confused by the middle paragraph on page 119, when he calls for “a form of culture in which fiction would not be limited by the figure of the author.” He says “It would be pure romanticism, however, to imagine a culture in which the fictive would operate in a absolutely free state, in which fiction would be put at the disposal of everyone, and would develop without passing through something like a necessary or constraining figure.” I sounds like what he is calling for is much like the blogsphere, where anyone is free to create content. Even though blog writers are not professional writers, I still consider them authors, because he or she is the author of that blog, so I’m not sure what Foucault is asking for. It is probably because his definition of an author is different from mine and I’m not quite sure what his definition really is. Once I fully understand his argument of what an author actually is, the whole thing will probably make more sense to me.