What Is a Digital Author?: The Faulknerian Author Function in Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme

This article examines Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme (2010) through its references to the fiction of William Faulkner. This article contends that Film Socialisme’s distinctive method of allusion serves a poetic function, beckoning our attention to how language, representations, and ideas recirculate, and what this means to us—or should mean to us—in a world pervaded by digital technology and intellectual property regimes. Godard’s references to the fiction of William Faulkner serve as a case study, not only because they offer a rich illustration of how Godard reworks his source material, but also because the filmmaker has consistently gestured to the work of Faulkner throughout his career, from his first feature-length film to his most recent. This article finds that the film’s circuitous and prolific method of allusion functions both as a means to critique commonly held notions of authorship, and to point out the absurdity of copyright laws, or as they are known in France, droits d’auteur. Further, Film Socialisme’s use of Light in August in points to an epistemic anxiety regarding the limits of language and narrative to faithfully represent lived experience, and in turn, the world.