Standing in the Shadow of Giants: Plagiarists, Authors, Collaborators. Perspectives on Writing: Theory, Research, Practice. Volume 2

Who's cheating whom in college writing instruction? This book argues that through binary privileging of the real author (the inspired, autonomous genius) over the transgressive writer (the collaborator or the plagiarist), composition pedagogy deprives students of important opportunities to join in scholarly discourse and assume authorial roles. From Plato's paradoxical dependence on and rejection of Homer, to Jerome McGann's dismissal of copyright as the hand of the dead, Standing in the Shadow of Giants surveys changes and conflicts in Western theories of authorship. From this survey emerges an account of how and why plagiarism became important to academic culture; how and why current pedagogical representations of plagiarism contradict contemporary theory of authorship; why the natural, necessary textual strategy of patchwriting is mis-classified as academic dishonesty; and how teachers might craft pedagogy that authorizes student writing instead of criminalizing it. This book is a history of composition studies which follows a single strand: plagiarism. The problem the book addresses is the contradictions between what composition scholars now collectively believe about reading and writing, and what composition teachers (including many of those same composition scholars) actually put into practice in their classroom representations of authorship and plagiarism. The book concludes with recommendations for how those contradictions might be reduced or at least addressed. The composition history that this book offers is a history of how "patchwriting" (something all academic writers do) came to fall outside the category of mimesis and into the category of cheating. The book's ideological task is to identify the cultural work that this criminalization of patchwriting serves. And its teleology is an effort to restore patchwriting to the category of mimesis. The book asserts that patchwriting has a legitimate and valuable place in literacy instruction and recommends that the category of plagiarism be redefined by educational institutions: that authorial intention become a component in determining what is and is not plagiarism, and that patchwriting qualify as plagiarism and thus as transgression only if the author's intention is fraudulent. Contains an extensive references list. (NKA)

Surveys changes and conflicts in Western theories of authorship and presents an account of how and why plagiarism became important to academic culture.

Booknews

Ventures an evaluative argument about plagiarism. Argues that the term plagiarism has come to describe disparate behaviors and that the inclusion of what the author calls patchwriting in the category of plagiarism denies students opportunities to become scholars. Looks at why patchwriting is associated with academic dishonesty, and the cultural work accomplished by the criminalization of patchwriting, contending that criminalization of patchwriting protects the power of the dominant culture by preventing students from practicing one of the important means by which scholars write. Surveys rhetorical practices on which inclusion of patchwriting could be based, and offers policy arguments for a positive pedagogy of patchwriting. The author is associated with Texas Christian University. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Dedication Contents Preface Epigraphs Introduction: Toward a Pedagogy of (Re)Formative Composition I. Plagiarists: What a Mess! 1. The Problems of Plagiarism 2. The Anxieties of Authorship and Pedagogy 3. Autonomous Collaboration II. Authors: How Did We Get into This Mess? 4. Historical Models 5. Modern Authors 6. Modern Plagiarists III. Collaborators: How Can We Get Out of this Mess? 7. Contemporary Alternatives 8. Pedagogy for (Re)Formative Composition 9. Reforming Plagiarism Policies Afterword References Author Index Subject Index