It’s ALL a Sample (or Remix)…

What are We Writing For?

 

Reading the work and theories of Johnson-Eilola & Selber (2007) regarding the relationship between plagiarism and assemblage, I am reminded of my days working with Kaplan K-12 Learning Services.  As an instructor for this company, I was provided with all of the resources I would ever need for presenting their curriculum to my students.  For the duration of my employment I was a scripted teacher, and any deviation from this script was frowned upon by my supervisors.  Johnson-Eilola & Selber reminded me that in this age of accountability, teachers, just as much as students, are victims of assemblage.  According to these authors the “final” product a student produces—a text—is not concerned with original words or images on a page or screen but concerned primarily with assemblages of parts” (380).  Similarly, today’s pedagogical practices, and professional development of teachers are also concerned with their ability to reassemble information and present it to their students for the purpose of achieving a particular objective or score.
 

In fact, as I have often discussed in my blog posts this semester, much of the knowledge or information we acquire is a “simulation of its predecessor” (Toffoletti, Baudrillard).  What Johnson-Eilola & Selber are suggesting is that student writers are being constructed to simulate and hide their “genius”.  The authors state that “[w]hat we want to suggest…is that the whole issue of plagiarism is still tied to the idea of the lone, creative genius.  In other words, at least one set of social forces suggests to students that using citations and quotations from sources materials will be valued less than their own original text, a situation that may encourage them to conceal their sources” (378).  They propose a redefinition of creativity; one in which “[c]reativity…shifts into assemblage:  Take what already exists and make something else, something that works to solve problems in new, local contexts” (400). 

To this I say “yes” and “no”

We spend our class time theorizing and philosophizing these ideas of agency, embodiment, consciousness, and originality.  And we often leave the room realizing that all that we know, anything that we perceive to be an original idea, is actually a copy of something that came before it.  In a nutshell…it is all plagiarized.  Yes, students are taught to recognize the current version of the box or wheel.  Teaching and instructional practices utilized in this age of accountability ensure that they learn to understand, interpret, and reiterate whatever society deems to be the current standard or model at the moment for a particular subject because at the end of the day anything we believe is the product of social construction.  Let’s face it, to what extent can we really believe that anything we think is original?  At the end of the day the responsibility of students, teachers, and ultimately society is to think critically about their social constructions.  However, one is also apt to disagree with the idea that students are not being taught to construct or make meaning of their own.  If anything the student has more creative license, more agency to make meaning than the author.  The work of the author is often open to more interpretation than he/she may have ever intended and readers are free to glean what they will from it.  Roland Barthes suggests that “literature is [the] neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes” (2).  Writers are essentially put into boxes or wheels.  They are constrained or confined by meaning.  The identity of the writer is constructed by interpretation…the meaning made of his/her writing.  At the end of the day producing a final product is a part of a cycle of constructing meaning.  Barthes states that “a code cannot be destroyed, it can only be “played with”…by abruptly violating expected meanings” (p. 3).  As I work to interpret Johnson-Eilola & Selber, I want my students to work toward producing original work that affects social change.  I want to be honest about the issues that plague, corrupt, and destroy society…I want my own writing to change the world and change the lives of those who encounter my theories and ideas for the better.  But regardless of intent simply by constructing meaning and knowledge to some extent our work has some type of social effect.  We add new knowledge to the field, we affect the lives of those studied, we stir old archives, and we create “new” knowledge, if only for ourselves; to some extent we have a social effect on the world no matter how small. 

As a student, as well as someone journeying into the world of publishing to further her academic success and professional reputation as an academic, I can no longer write for myself (the real question is will I always have the courage to be this honest – or will I develop a fear of honesty in favor of being published?).  My ideas and interpretations of theories are no longer just mine…come to think of it they were never mine to begin with…no matter how revolutionary I ever thought they were.  Instead like the writers and theorists who came before me and those who will come after me I am “a mediator, shaman or speaker, whose “performance” may be admired (that is, his mastery of the narrative code), but not his “genius”” (Barthes 2).  Producing a final product, whether this means writing for academia or the great American novel, is simply a part of a cycle of constructing meaning in which we take an “original” idea make it the model, teach to the model, change the meaning, and do it all over again.