| In Hypertext 2.0 George Landow claims that in a hypertextual environment, the figure of the author actually comes closer to the figure of the reader, because the reader becomes a more active co-producer of the text. Also, Landow shows how both Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault problematise the traditional, modernist concept of the author. This concept, they argue, closes off the text and plays down collaboration. Foucault, who coins the term 'author-function' to show how this concept is actually a mechanism of power in a (group of) text(s), argues that an author/writer is not just somebody who writes, but that the concept is highly socially and historically constructed. This author-function economically and culturally both exerts power and allows for empowerment. Foucault's critique allows Landow to theorise a much more multiple concept of the author, and this in turn potentially dramatically changes power structures academic scholarship, allowing for explicit collaboration. Furthermore, since in hypertext the boundaries between inside and outside the text get more blurred, which Landow also relates Derrida's idea of decentralising and to his notion of intertextuality of a text, 'the' author automatically gets moved away from its central position in the text/the field of (academic) writings, to become (just) a 'node in an information network'. |