Thoughts on Plagiarism
There were a couple of passages in Lunsford’s article that got me thinking about our earlier conversation about plagiarism. My comments really don’t address or respond to the major arguments in Lunsford’s article, but I thought these two parts were interesting and important enough to pick up on. The first is a question that Lunsford puts to Anzaldúa: “You must have read Foucault, you must have read Derrida, you must have read Irigaray or Cixous. You said that you hadn’t read them before you wrote Borderlands, but that the ideas – they’re ‘out there”’ (1417). We can take Lunsford’s question several ways. First, Anzaldúa has an intellect capable of coming up with ideas on her own, oftentimes independent of other people with intellects capable of coming up with the same ideas. The second way we can take this is a bit less favorable toward Anzaldúa, and that is that Anzaldúa stole these ideas. Lunsford repeats the phrase “you must have read” three times, which may emphasize a disbelief that anyone could possibly have independently come up with an idea that Foucault or Derrida or Irigaray or Cixous came up with. A third possibility is somewhat favorable to Anzaldúa, and that is the implication that it is shocking that someone as well-read as Anzaldúa has not read these authors.
The second passage I wish to quote bears directly on the first. This is Anzaldúa responding to a question: “I write my texts, but I borrow the ideas and images from other people. […] Sometimes I forget that I’ve borrowed them. Years and years go by, and I do something similar with my descriptions, but I’ve forgotten that I’ve gotten it somewhere else” (1420). This second passage points to the difficulty of really ever knowing exactly where all of our ideas come from, a point made in Howard’s article. The upshot, of course, is the impossibility, perhaps, of every really being able to document accurately from whom we are getting our ideas from.
Anzaldúa seems to be quietly arguing against the “single ownership” idea that is very much a part of our academic institutions, perhaps moreso in the West, having its origins in the Renaisance. Her notion of a “patchwork” reflects this stance against the "single ownership" idea. And why not? It does seem a bit unfair that a good idea can be had by several people, and yet somehow get attached to just a single person. What, in fact, are we doing when we cite someone’s idea? What are the assumptions or cultural forces that are at play? Are we celebrating genius? Are we celebrating genius only within the field of academia and publication? Are we honoring the victor in the context of a free-market and capitalist system, in effect saying, “You won! You published this new idea first!” I am not sure.
“Toward a Mestiza Rehetoric: Gloria Anzaldúa on Composition and Postcoloniality (1998)” by Andrea A.
Lunsford. Excerpted from The Norton Book of Composition Studies (Vol. 1, pp. 1401-1428). London,
England: W.W. Norton, 2009. Susan Miller (Ed.).
The second passage I wish to quote bears directly on the first. This is Anzaldúa responding to a question: “I write my texts, but I borrow the ideas and images from other people. […] Sometimes I forget that I’ve borrowed them. Years and years go by, and I do something similar with my descriptions, but I’ve forgotten that I’ve gotten it somewhere else” (1420). This second passage points to the difficulty of really ever knowing exactly where all of our ideas come from, a point made in Howard’s article. The upshot, of course, is the impossibility, perhaps, of every really being able to document accurately from whom we are getting our ideas from.
Anzaldúa seems to be quietly arguing against the “single ownership” idea that is very much a part of our academic institutions, perhaps moreso in the West, having its origins in the Renaisance. Her notion of a “patchwork” reflects this stance against the "single ownership" idea. And why not? It does seem a bit unfair that a good idea can be had by several people, and yet somehow get attached to just a single person. What, in fact, are we doing when we cite someone’s idea? What are the assumptions or cultural forces that are at play? Are we celebrating genius? Are we celebrating genius only within the field of academia and publication? Are we honoring the victor in the context of a free-market and capitalist system, in effect saying, “You won! You published this new idea first!” I am not sure.
“Toward a Mestiza Rehetoric: Gloria Anzaldúa on Composition and Postcoloniality (1998)” by Andrea A.
Lunsford. Excerpted from The Norton Book of Composition Studies (Vol. 1, pp. 1401-1428). London,
England: W.W. Norton, 2009. Susan Miller (Ed.).