Plagiarism, originality, assemblage
Introduction
In this article, we consider the relationships among plagiarism, originality, and assemblage, arguing for a view of writing that shifts the emphasis from performance to action or effect in context. Taking seriously the social turn that has occupied composition studies since the 1980s (see, for example, Cooper, 1986, Faigley, 1986, Odell, 1985), the argument offered here follows the logic of that turn by recognizing and valuing the remix practices that can now be found in many forms of discourse, including student writing and communication. While many in the field claim to take a social approach, teachers still often expect their students to produce what are considered to be thoroughly “original” texts—texts that make a clear distinction between invented and borrowed work, between that which is unique and that which is derivative or supportive. In addition, this highlighted separation is frequently constructed as a hierarchy in terms of the writing process: The best work of writers is understood to be their original text with citations and borrowed materials situated as useful but less valuable support. As we will maintain, however, this distinction is not only problematic but also counterproductive, especially as teachers attempt to prepare students to be writers in their professional and personal lives.
Our argument begins with a brief discussion of the history of originality in composition, a history that has contributed to our own, often narrow perspectives on plagiarism. We then consider texts as assemblages, highlighting the rhetorical dimensions of this articulation and challenging the view that remixed texts are essentially derivative texts, a naïve and uncreative form of plagiarism. The action-oriented part of the essay looks to other places for models that work with texts as assemblages, drawing on practices from both disciplinary and popular contexts, including architecture and music remixing. The conclusion addresses concerns—legal, ethical, creative, and pedagogical—that teachers might have when thinking of assigning remix projects.
Section snippets
Datacloud: The remix
Before beginning our argument, let us offer a quick example of remix (we offer extended examples later). When Johndan was visiting Texas Tech University in the spring of 2007, Peter England mentioned he had recently read Datacloud: Toward a new theory of online work (2005), a book Johndan had written. In that book, Johndan discussed, among other things, ways that composition might adopt remixing practices common in areas such as music and architecture. The last chapter of the book is itself a
Plagiarism and originality in composition
While designing Transworld Skateboarding magazine from 1983–87, [David] Carson often found it necessary to design with existing photographs of marginal quality. He confronted a perpetual challenge in trying to invent a way to make the photograph and layout more interesting and dynamic for the viewer. Photographs become raw material vulnerable to extension and improvement through processes used by graphic designers to create pages—image selection, cropping, juxtaposition, overlapping, bleeding,
What are assemblages?
The mix tape as a form of American Folk Art: predigested cultural artifacts combined with homespun technology and magic markers turn the mix tape to a message in a bottle. I am no mere consumer of pop culture, it says, but also a producer of it. Mix tapes mark the moment of consumer culture in which listeners attained control over what they heard, in what order and at what cost. It liberated us from music stores and radios in the same way that radios and recordings liberated generations earlier
Other models: remixing, architecture, design patterns
In 1960s Paris, the Situationists initiated concepts like the dérive or psycho-geography, but these days that sense of wandering through an indeterminate maze of intentionality can become the totality of the creative act. Selection, detection, defining morphologies, and building structures, that's what makes the new art go round. The challenge is to keep creating new worlds, new scenarios at almost every moment of thought, to float in an ocean of possibility. The DJ “mix” is another form of
Conclusions and concerns
It is suggested that a collage approach, an approach in which objects are conscripted or seduced from out of their context, is—at the present day—the only way of dealing with the ultimate problems of, either or both, utopia and tradition; and the provenance of the architectural objects introduced into the social collage need not be of great consequence. It relates to taste and conviction. The objects can be aristocratic or they can be “folkish,” academic or popular. … Societies and persons
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Rebecca Wilson Lundin and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a draft of this essay. We would also like to thank Peter England for sharing his Datacloud remix with us.
Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Professor at Clarkson University (Potsdam, NY), and Stuart A. Selber, Associate Professor at Penn State University (State College, PA), are frequent collaborators in composition and technical communication. Together they have co-authored numerous essays, co-edited
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