MLA Citation for Foucault/ Important Quotes

Foucault, Michel "What is an Author?"The Author Function; translation Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977. pp.124-127.

"The author's name is a proper name and therefore it raises the problems common to all proper names. Obviously, one cannot turn a proper name into a pure and simple reference. It has other than indicative functions: more than an indication, a gesture, a finger pointed at someone, it is the equivalant of a descriptions. When one says 'Aristotle' one employs a word that is the equivalent of one, or a series, of definite descriptions" (p.105)

"...we could say that in a civilization like our own there are a certain number of discourses that are endowed with the 'author function', while others are deprived of it. A private lettermay well have a signer-it does not have an author; a contract may well have a guarantor-it does not have an author. An anonymous text posted on a wall probably has a writer-but not an author. The author function is therefore characterristic of the mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of certain discourses within a society." (p. 108)