The author is here deprived of his/her role as originator and placed within a discursive field; the author is her/himself a subject of discourse, a proper name associated with a text, performing the function of authorship. Accordingly, Foucault concluded, “what matter who is speaking?” Critical readers should ask instead, “what are the modes of existence of this discourse? Where does it come from; how is it circulated; who controls it? … Who can fulfill the diverse functions of the subject?”15 Literary works and other texts thus take on historical significance as expressions of cultural systems rather than as the works of individual authors. Much as social historians might see goods and services as a product of economic systems instead of the work of the individual producers, so the post-structuralist reader sees texts as a product of discursive systems instead of individual genius. The author is not thereby neglected or considered unnecessary any more than is the worker, but the meanings embedded and contested within the text may range beyond his/her control, and appear as much through reading, as through writing.