I just don't know what he even meant. — besserlernen

I know the feeling. But it is always fair to ask the prof. what he means or intends. Who knows, maybe that is what he wants.

Best not to be brutal about it lest you start a battle you will lose. But near infinite ignorance is the condition of us all at all times. It cannot be a flaw or failure to confess it when it matters and to ask for a little light. Or even insist on it.

And again who knows, the prof. might give you an inadvertent carte blanche, if, e.g., he tells you to proceed with what you think it means. The tactic then is to reproduce the permission in your introduction in some rhetorically compelling way, and then do a decent job with it.

My own experience was an assignment - not a small one - to write on "the beneficial human condition." That was decades ago and I still have no idea what it means. I did try asking but was dismissed by being referred to my classmates, all of whom presumed to know what was obscure to me. I'm older and wiser now; I should have called his bluff. And this at a master's level.

Somebody smart will be along in a minute, but while you wait... In the beginning was the text, and the text was with God, and the text was God. One might say that the Author, or even he author, is a fabrication of the text - we presume - rather as Robinson Crusoe presumed, thunderstruck, the maker of the footprint as a (savage) foot. but the experience is just a shape dented in the sand. Author as absent other.

"Imagine a topic"... imagine your professor giving two sets of marks, one for the essay and one for you, the author of the essay. Does that make sense at all? [hint: no!]

Nice! I'll buy it. I just can't make sense of the "abstract from," but that's likely a personal problem.

I just can't make sense of the "abstract from," but that's likely a personal problem. — tim wood

Yeah it's really radical, but kinda obvious. Your idea of me is entirely abstracted from text. If you passed me by on the street you'd contribute to my begging bowl or not according to your habit and principle, but you would never know it was me.

Personal identity is totally abstract. And I can totally identify with that being "a personal problem". :cool:

Thanks guys, I have a lot to learn.. It's my first semester and it's.. Challenging

In this text Foucault defends "the ordinary of things" — besserlernen

Or was this a reference to Foucault most famous work The Order of Things?

Plenty of material you can find on goggle. I would have thought history and art lend themselves to the approach.

From the Stanford Encyclopedia
3.2.3 Language and “Man”
At this point, The Order of Things introduces the two central features of thought after Kant: the return of language and the “birth of man”. Our discussion above readily explains why Foucault talks of a return of language: it now has an independent and essential role that it did not have in the Classical view. But the return is not a monolithic phenomenon. Language is related to knowledge in diverse ways, each of which corresponds a distinctive sort of “return”. So, for example, the history of natural languages has introduced confusions and distortions that we can try to eliminate through techniques of formalization. On the other hand, this same history may have deposited fundamental truths in our languages that we can unearth only by the methods of hermeneutic interpretation. (So these two apparently opposed approaches—underlying the division of analytic and continental philosophy—are in fact, according to Foucault, complementary projects of modern thought.) But there is yet another possibility: freed from its subordination to ideas, language can function (as in the Renaissance) as an autonomous reality—indeed as even more deeply autonomous than Renaissance language, since there is no system of resemblances binding it to the world. Even more, Foucault suggests, language is a truth unto itself, speaking nothing other than its own meaning. This is the realm of “pure literature”, evoked by Mallarmé when he answered Nietzsche’s (genealogical) question, “Who is speaking?” with, “Language itself”. In contrast to the Renaissance, however, there is no divine Word underlying and giving unique truth to the words of language. Literature is literally nothing but language—or rather many languages, speaking for and of themselves.

Not a clue matey. Sounds like a bs course on bs. It is to your credit that you find his question confusing. Leave the course and do some proper philosophy, not poseur nonsense. Or just ask your professor what he means over and over again and over again.

thanks :)

i know, we need to. Take this course

The word "author" seems to have broadened its scope over the last 5 centueries - it used to refer to writers but now its meaning is closer to creator of all and sundry things. Some even refer to God as an author and, on the opposite end, some of us author tragedies on grand scales. Even with such a radical transformation, the old, original meaning still lingers on.

This is exactly the wrong way around. The 'author' as a writer represents a radical narrowing of the term which by contrast has a far richer history. It takes it's root from the
Latin auctoritas, or authority, and in turn from augere, “augment". The term has legal roots:

"In the sphere of private law, auctoritas is the property of the auctor (author), that is, the person sui iuris (the pater familias) who intervenes—pronouncing the technical formula auctor fio (I am made auctor)—in order to confer legal validity on the act of a subject who cannot independently bring a legally valid act into being. Thus, the auctoritas of the tutor makes valid the act of one who lacks this capacity, and the auctoritas of the father “authorizes”—that is, makes valid—the marriage of the son in potestate. ...The term derives from the verb augeo: the auctor is is qui auget, the person who augments, increases, or perfects the act—or the legal situation—of someone else". (Agamben, "Auctoritas and Potestas", State of Exception)

This is exactly the wrong way around. The 'author' as a writer represents a radical narrowing of the term which by contrast has a far richer history. It takes it's root from the
Latin auctoritas, or authority, and in turn from augere, “augment". The term has legal roots:

"In the sphere of private law, auctoritas is the property of the auctor (author), that is, the person sui iuris (the pater familias) who intervenes—pronouncing the technical formula auctor fio (I am made auctor)—in order to confer legal validity on the act of a subject who cannot independently bring a legally valid act into being. Thus, the auctoritas of the tutor makes valid the act of one who lacks this capacity, and the auctoritas of the father “authorizes”—that is, makes valid—the marriage of the son in potestate. ...The term derives from the verb augeo: the auctor is is qui auget, the person who augments, increases, or perfects the act—or the legal situation—of someone else". (Agamben, "Auctoritas and Potestas", State of Exception) — StreetlightX

So, I got it backwards. :rofl: Good to know. :up:

The title could have been written as ‘what the Foucault is an author?’ Not that I have any interest in, or knowledge of, the subject, but it’s just a better headline.

So i asked him today what he meant by the question or if he can give us a hint regarding a topic for which it would be worthwhile to abstract from these the categories authors and work.

No chance. But our whole class is confused.