Patricia McCarthy – What is an Author…. a Question for the Cartels?
 
Issue 44 (Summer 2010) Pages – 33-45
 
After a year‟s experience of being part of one of ISLP‟s cartels, the question of authorship emerged, not in the sense of plagiarism or of who can claim ownership over an idea or a text. Our question about authorship centres on the big Other, the field of a knowledge devoid of subjectivity, unconscious knowledge where one does not know who it is that knows. The co-ordinates of the big Other, understood as utterly distinguishable from the One, will be questioned with reference to Foucault‟s address to the Collège de France, entitled „What is an author?”. This is a necessary preliminary to grasping the full power of Lacan‟s four discourses.…..