Authorship and Origins

Foucault says that the origins of anything is an ever receding point. However, we should still try to trace origins. Tracing origins necessitates the tracing of authorship, every time, even in science, because in science origin stories are still authored.

The simple connection between authorship and origins is that both are strategies for ownership. A claim to authorship is a claim to ownership. An origin story as well, is a claim to ownership. If a certain peoples originated in a certain geographical location, than that gives them a claim to ownership. There are also claims to the ownership of one’s origins. The claim that human kind originated in the Garden of Eden at the hand of god, is a claim to ownership of the history of human beings, ownership of the correct, real, true story. A claim to authorship is a claim to being the originator of something. If I claim authorship in this blog or that power point, than I claim that it originated in me. This is the simple connection between authorship and origins. They aren’t the same thing, but they are connected.