Which ego am I using"

When reading Foucault, I was somewhat taken aback by the absoluteness of his assertion of the author function. When reading, I have often felt like I gain knowledge of the author and his/her viewpoints pertaining to certain matters. However, Foucault completely shoots this concept to hell. At first, I merely shrugged off Foucault’s declaration that the persona of a text stands “for a ‘second self’ whose similarity to the author is never fixed and undergoes considerable alteration within the course of a single book” (1266). However, as I contemplated this statement, it gained more and more credence. Foucault said that this “plurality of egos” was true of all discourse. In effect, while reading an author’s work may make you feel like you know something about them, but this is entirely untrue. Even looking back at my own writing, I realized that I have often written papers or stories that in no way signify my outlook on a subject. It seems that when writing, you can never be certain which voice will come out. The only aspect of this you can address with any certainty is the fact that the voice can not be looked at as a direct reflection of the author’s persona.
Blogs are a better representation of this plurality of egos than most texts. When reading someone’s blog, you often feel like you know the author and their method of thinking. However, the voice you are reading may be one of a myriad of egos that this author possesses. One of my favorite blogs over the past year was TonyHomo.com. This was a satirical blog written by someone acting as Drew Bledsoe, whose role as starting quarterback on the Dallas Cowboys had been taken over by Tony Romo. Meant purely for entertainment value, the author wrote as if he were Bledsoe, watching from the bench, ragging on Romo for every miniscule mistake with the malice of someone who has just had their job ripped from beneath them. After months of reading this blog, I certainly had no sense of the author’s actual persona, only of this vehement Bledsoe ego that the author took on. Dr. Jill Walker commented on Foucault’s author function in her blog http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/archives/blog_theorising/what_is_an_author.html. She also found Foucault’s view on authorship disturbing, stating: “Foucault wrote in 1969 that the idea of an author is merely a function of discourse, a necessary construction to keep fiction at bay. As an undergrad I thought of that as kind of fascinating but rather abstract, after all, there are living authors.” Dr. Walker views the blogworld as one nearing “authorlessness.” Yet, in my view, the blogworld is in fact going the other way. As Foucault said, author’s can have a plurality of egos. It seems that this blogworld has just widened the spectrum of these egos, as author’s have more freedom to use their different egos than ever before.

Oh wait, I'm allowed to be a person now?

Finally we have come to a point where it is acceptable to at least broach having an I. The individual is no longer strictly taboo. Yet, when we look at this I, it is deconstructed into the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. Either that, or it is the “I” – completely questioning the individual. It seems ludicrous that when we are taught from a young age that we must be an individual and formulate our own persona, theory does not see it fit to allow this. The only I we are actually allowed is an unconscious one, more concerned with taking the place of our father than of anything else. Freud’s representation of the I is as far away from the concept of an individual as you can possibly reach.
The Id is merely your biological urges, leaving you absolutely no chance of becoming an individual. The closest thing to being an individual would be your Superego, which regulates your Id so that you don’t look like the ass that you are in front of other people. This balance between your pure “asshole” self and your conscience is what people actually see, your Ego.
It seems odd that when everything Freud posits relies on your urges and unconscious, he would not have a larger reliance on the individual persona. I feel like when I have certain dreams, they do represent things as Freud says. But other times, I just dream of things that are important in my life. Likewise, when I am awake, I certainly believe my persona is more than just a mere balance between biological needs and the Superego.