Textula

Abstract

Textula Robert Ready (bio) Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair —Warren Zevon I In his classic essay, "What Is an Author?" Michel Foucault displaces the term "author" into the term "author-function."1 In the essay's final sections, Foucault turns to the "'initiators of discursive practices,'" such as Marx or Freud. "The distinctive contribution of these authors," he writes, "is that they produced not only their own work, but the possibility and the rules of formation of other texts." He distinguishes the role of such initiators from that of a novelist, "who is basically never more than the author of his own text." A novelist, Foucault insists, is not an initiator of a discursive practice who "establish[es] the endless possibility of discourse" (131). It is possible, though, that a novelist can be more than the author of his or her own text. She or he can be, end up being, or be promoted as, the initiator of a discursive practice which the initiating text—the first in the series—establishes as an endless possibility. A unique novel, one can argue, may exercise its "distinctive contribution" not as an "author-function" but as a "text-function." One might expect to reserve such text-function status for culturally resonant novels from Don Quixote through Ulysses. But a mass-culture novel may just as well be a text-function that initiates its own endless discourse. [End Page 275] Such is the case for Bram Stoker's Dracula. This essay offers a close reading of the book that demonstrates the particular narrative structure that has made it the initiator of the endless popular discursive practice about vampires. The text-function the book initiates produces the rules and formation, the endless possibilities of the Dracula discourse. Furthermore, since Stoker's text is typically identified as gothic, it is important to note that "What is an Author?" pointedly dismisses Ann Radcliffe ("a very simple example") as an initiator of discursive practices. This is so, Foucault argues, because while Radcliffe "put into circulation a certain number of resemblances and analogies patterned on her work," she did not do what the likes of Marx and Freud do. They ". . . made possible a certain number of differences. They cleared a space for the introduction of elements other than their own, which, nevertheless, remain within the field of discourse they initiated" (132). Proceeding from the cogency of Foucault's author-function in critical discourse, text-function occupies that different critical space that Foucault's idea of author-function clears for elements other than its own. In the case of Dracula, text-function demonstrates a certain slippage or instability in any strict delineation or restriction of author-function to "founders" alone, to the exclusion of unique single texts that generate endless possibilities for subsequent discursive practices. Recent corroboration abounds of Dracula as initiating text-function in the production and circulation of variations on the vampire theme. In 1998, Carol A. Senf set the contemporary discursive practice of Dracula on the World Wide Web, "which includes material on various vampire films and stage adaptations, electronic versions of Stoker's novel, biographical material on Stoker, games based on the novel, virtual tours of both Whitby and of Dracula's homeland, model kits of various characters, and costumes" (Dracula: Between Tradition and Modernism, 98). Eleven years later, "The June premiere of the second season of 'True Blood' . . . drew 3.4 million viewers, making it HBO's most-watched program since the 'Sopranos' finale in 2007" (Ruth La Ferla, E7). "Tru:Blood," a "blood orange" drink allied with the series of the same name, has the slogan "All Flavor. No Bite." The series' ads on the sides of NYC buses said, "It Hurts So Good." The PIX channel sidewalk poster-ads for "The Vampire Diaries" had a girl on her back with a black bird on her knee and the spondee "Love Sucks." The consumption in various forms of Stephenie Meyer's [End Page 276] vampire romances is a worldwide phenomenon. Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew, has co-authored Dracula The Un-Dead: The Sequel to the Original Classic. The number of such variations now circulating as films, cable TV productions...