Learned Plagiarism

Academic Camouflage…
The Art of Mushfake (or Invisibility)

I cannot stop reeling over this idea of "learned plagiarism".  I keep thinking of the way I learned to write a research paper in high school and I feel like I learned this process of assemblage in sort of the opposite way.  I was encouraged to acknowledge my sources in my formal writing.  From what I came to understand from my teachers, if I failed to cite my sources then my work would lack the credibility and genius (Johnson-Eilola & Selber) that would lead to its acceptance in mainstream academia. 

Later on in my academic career (and by later on I mean NOW), I would learn that I had to stop depending on the “three long quote, five short quote” structure my papers and writing had come to adopt if I even hoped to make it as a doctoral student, let alone a published author in a peer-reviewed academic journal.  My writing and academic identity had to be transformed.  I could no longer rely on the ideas, theories, and philosophies of others nestled comfortably between quotation marks.  My “original” ideas could no longer be hidden among citations.  NOW to be accepted into the world of mainstream academia, my scholarship had to be entirely my own – I had to become the citation – and the credible sources I was taught to cite/acknowledge as a K-12 student were now supposed to be supporting actors in my work.  The credibility of my work/academic writing no longer depends on how many sources I could cite, or authors/theorists I could quote as it once did, but on the merit of my creative genius.

Obviously this kind of pressure did not exist for me as an elementary school or even middle school student – at this stage in life these were the days of simple sentences, anagram poems, book reports, and grammar lessons.  These typical lessons/activities, even if marketed to students as wholly creative under the guise of an art project (i.e., not in the form of a textbook or worksheet), were still structured, formatted, and pieced together to limit the true potential of the student’s creative genius.  I think the point I am trying to make is that all of these ideas are an assemblage of something else from somewhere else -- from the lesson plan to the final product – from the idea to the format and example, to the implementation and the outcome – it’s ALL a sample of something that came before it – an assemblage or collage of words, ideas, and material.   

As I analyze my own experiences as a writing student (nay as a student in general), I realize that I was taught to mushfake (Gee) – trained in the art of mushfake discourse.  The definition of this term is most likely what you think it to be – an accurate representation of the amalgamation of the two words that make it up – mush and fake.  Loosely translated, a person who engages in mushfaking is combining (or mushing – mush used as verb) together partial acquisition of the dominant discourse, as well as meta-knowledge (knowledge of other knowledge – mush used as a noun) of strategies associated with functional literacy to pass/hide (fake) in mainstream society.  It is academic/literacy camouflage…a survival strategy…hiding out in the open…“within their own culture” (Bartlett, 1994, 295) – or at least with the culture shaped by the dominant discourse.  The long of the short of it is that my entire academic career, the philosophies and identities I have written for myself in many of life’s forums have been and continue to be assemblage and mushfake – the ineffectual reassembly/simulation of ideas, words, material a.k.a knowledge to situate ourselves and construct our identities in the performance piece that is academia, mainstream society, marriage, motherhood, and ultimately life. 

At this point, it seems as though I have reached an impasse – one in which I am trapped in the ouroboros, realizing that even this piece is a reassembly of ideas/theories, making it a part of the very cycle about which I am trying to think critically, but from which I am bred. 

Beware the Ouroboros!

Turns out it does not have to be a ditto to be a copy…or mushfake!