The Author: An Epistemic Subject and a Tragic Hero

The term and concept of the author/authorship entered systematic and reflective discourse in the 19th century through jurisprudence, philology, and philosophy. Today, it has become clear that their theoretical adequacy and practical effectiveness require overcoming the controversies of conceptualization. Philosophy contextualizes the author within a system of categories such as subject, consciousness, creativity, work, and dialogue – categories that themselves demand further elaboration and refinement. Simultaneously, the status of the author is legitimized through the practice of legislation and enforcement in the field of copyright law. At the intersection of postmodern philology and philosophy, the author becomes a central object of both deconstruction and rehabilitation. The history of authorship unfolds as an illustration of the competition between transcendentalist, naturalistic, and mysterian interpretations of consciousness and the subject. Consumer and information societies, technoscience, and a technocratic approach to personhood turn the author into a hostage of techno-feudalism, an anonymous entity in social networks, and an involuntary writer. Authorship is being eroded, disappearing at the intersections of the natural and artificial, creativity and imitation, individual and group, consciousness and technical systems. The prospects of the author mirror the future of the human as a subject in the modern world – one whose very existence responds to the Hamletian question.