Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

3. Unravelling the Demonic TextThe ultimate meaning of desire is death but death is not thenovel’s ultimate meaning. The demons like raving madmenthrow themselves into the sea and perish. But the patient iscured.– René Girard 1TWO KINDS OF TEXTUALITYAs Owen Miller has noted, “a powerful link exists between theories of theself and theories of the text.” 2 The criticism of the “life and works” of notableauthors has been displaced by increasingly theoretical interest in themore general phenomenon of ‘textuality.’ Simultaneously the traditionalquestions pertaining to subjectivity, social or historical context have beenopened for reformulation. Michel Foucault’s essay “What Is an Author?” isa famous example. It addresses the question of subjectivity in writing from apostmodern theoretical perspective; the idea of the text as an “expression”of an author’s thoughts has been superseded by the autonomous play of textuality.“Referring only to itself, but without being restricted to the confinesof its interiority, writing is identified with its own unfolded exteriority,”Foucault writes in his characteristic intricacy. 3 He also comments that thecontemporary inclination towards indifference to authorship is a subversionof ancient tradition – instead of immortalising the subject, writing is nowannouncing the author’s disappearance and death. Nevertheless, the effectsof authorship, as Foucault analysed them in his article, are very much operatingin commercial, legal and intellectual reality. An author’s name is a customarypoint of departure: it presents ways to define, group together, differentiateor contrast texts to each other. Authorship is also a historical institutionworking within a particular discourse. The principles of identifyingthe “author-function” in a discourse have remained quite similar from thetime of Saint Jerome (c. 347-420 C.E.), whom Foucault reads as proposingfour principles to identify a single author with his proper corpus. Firstly, authorequals a constant level of value (an inferior work ought to be excludedfrom the corpus); secondly, the author is also a field of conceptual coherence(contradictory texts should be taken out); thirdly, this figure also embodiesstylistic unity (those works that have expressions not typical of the1Girard 1961/1988, 290.2 Valdés - Miller 1985, xiii (“Preface”).3Foucault 1969/1989, 142.