The impression of authorial intention is produced as an effect of meaning itself.

Evidence

Meaning is an effect not only of conceptuality, however, but also of intention. ‘To mean’ implies at the same time both to signify and to have intention or purpose. If a piece of writing or other process of representation produces meaning, in doing so it produces the impression of an authorial intention or will. The more effectively this meaning is made to stand apart as its own realm, the more effective will be the impression of such intentionality. In order to return to the questions about modern political certainty that I raised at the beginning of this chapter, I want to show how the methods of effecting the existence of a separate conceptual realm were at the same time a new method of effecting intention, certainty, authorial will, or more generally authority itself. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 469

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Claims intentionality and authority are not causes but effects produced by representational technique — a paradigm-shifting link between epistemology and political authority.