All About the Author. Book of Proceedings. CA2RE: Conference for Artistic and Architectural Research, Milan 03-05 April 2025

In his 1969 lec­ture at the Col­lège de France, enti­tled Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?, Michel Fou­cault argued that the "author func­tion" pri­mar­i­ly express­es a form of own­er­ship (Focault, 1969). Being the author of a project means being respon­si­ble for actions, deci­sions, tri­umphs, or fail­ures. Authors, in fact, are rec­og­nized as such when they can be pun­‐ ished, that is, when they can be held account­able for their actions (Mal­‐ fona 2021a, 241–249). As Fou­cault reports, in his De viris illus­tribus, St. Jerome iden­ti­fied cri­te­ria for rec­og­niz­ing and defin­ing author­ship: con­sis­‐ tent val­ue, con­cep­tu­al coher­ence, and styl­is­tic uni­ty. From the char­ac­ter­‐ is­tics high­light­ed by St. Jerome, it would seem that the evo­lu­tion, mat­u­ra­‐ tion, influ­ences, and con­t­a­m­i­na­tions to which an author is inevitably exposed dur­ing their for­ma­tion must be lev­eled out. Today, the belief that an author has a well-defined iden­ti­ty seems insuf­fi­cient to describe this fig­ure who, on the con­trary, express­es the con­tra­dic­tions of his or her time through his or her work. Con­sis­ten­cy of style is no longer sought after as if it were a brand, and the author is no longer the unchal­lenge­‐ able indi­vid­u­al­i­ty of the past. On the con­trary, being an author today means being pre­dis­posed to dis­cuss, recon­sid­er, and mod­i­fy the very con­di­tion of being an author from time to time.