Diálogos anti-foucaultianos sobre a tentativa de apagamento do autor na França da época moderna

Abstract

The objective of this article is to historically research both the notions of literary copyright and the author's rights from there appearance in the XVIII century France. For so much, we proceed, first, over pre-revolutionary France, an analysis of the academic-intellectual valorization of the cultural system promoted during the reign of Lois XIV, as well as the social ascent of the figure of the philosophers and of the increase in respect of the French Republic of the Letters up to the period of the beginning of the French Revolution. In a second moment, we considered the ideas of the illuminist philosopher Denis Diderot as expressed in his memorial entitled “Letter on the commerce of the book” about the author's posture in the question of the discursive production. The intention is to show in what forms Denis Diderot thinks the figure of the author as a historical actor. Considering the posture of Diderot as author of his own memorial and, resorting the philosopher Michel Foucault in his essay That is an author?, we conclude that the idea of extinguishment of the author as consequence of the validation of the speeches for themselves just reflect the imposition of another voice, in this case, the imposition of the “voice” of the booksellers of Paris as they considerably modify what Diderot had initially proposed in the Letter.