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Thursday, October 25, 2007
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Yum-yum Simulacrum UD very much likes the way Professor Koppenhaver (see post below) calls plagiarism what it is: a selfish act. When a university leader like Southern Illinois' Glenn Poshard (or - as currently alleged - Tony Antoniou, who was dean of a business school) plagiarizes, it's literally about not caring what happens to large numbers of other people, and to institutions, so long as you advance your private interests. Strangely, those interests - in these cases - involve an ambition to run the very institutions the plagiarism eventually devastates. In order to run Southern Illinois University, or Durham University's business school, in order to rack up the degrees and publications you need to advance administratively, you steal other people's work and call it your own. Eventually, as is so often the case, what you've done comes to light, and the institution becomes a laughingstock. The very president of the university! A man who doesn't know what every freshman knows -- how to use a quotation mark... Why do you do this? Freudians might say you harbor unresolved malice against universities... or against yourself... That you've set the whole thing up to explode in your face, and in your university's face, because you crave abasement and destruction... UD doesn't move in such sophisticated circles. In UD's world, plagiarists like these are ciphers, nowhere men, empty suits, simulacra rather than people. I actually think this is the biggest insult to faculty and students at Southern Illinois University -- that they are still being led by a man who has nothing to offer a university. He's not an intellectual; he knows nothing about the ethos or content of scholarship. He's not a leader; he ran from the consequences of his misdeeds. He's a person who might glad a few hands in the capitol and get some money for the SIU campuses -- though the record shows it'll probably be for athletes and administrators rather than students and professors -- but who will never utter a meaningful word about the purpose of a university. Postmodern America has lots of simulacral people in it, people who really aren't there at all as substantive personalities, but who enact certain roles. These are our Gatsbys, our Felix Krulls, our Zeligs, our men without qualities, our unbearable lightness of beings. They're the empty vessels on America's high seas, and they may stay afloat for a lifetime, reading speeches written by other people, putting their name on work other people did, mouthing platitudes whispered into their ears by assistants... Arguably the only place in America where a few people still care whether you're a vacant or an occupied is the university. Certainly no one beyond a few editors cares whether the latest high-profile American simulacrum -- a best-selling cookbook assembled by Jessica Seinfeld's staff and stamped with her name -- is a simulacrum. Because the book is somewhat similar to another book released shortly before it, some people accuse Seinfeld of plagiarism. But, as a writer for Slate points out, she's not so much a plagiarist as a nothing: 'Jessica Seinfeld did not write the new cookbook Deceptively Delicious. A team of experts large enough to form a soccer team—a writer, chef, nutritionist, art director, photographer, agent, editor, project manager, and then some — did. [But despite claims by some, it's not plagiarized.] Plagiarism [is]... about dishonesty. It's about pretending someone else's ideas and work are your own, even if those ideas are paraphrased. [Seinfeld's book and the other book in question] are based on the same unremarkable, unoriginal idea. [This makes both books empty. But they're different enough in their particulars that one hasn't plagiarized from the other.]... Plagiarism is a serious accusation. It can get students expelled; it can ruin writers' careers. And if it's occurred, it should. But the news media should take plagiarism seriously enough to not use the word unless it truly applies. Many things can be said of Seinfeld's book and its runaway success. A sad commentary on the state of parenting? I think so. A triumph of celebrity over substance? You bet. Further evidence of the decline of the West? Definitely. But an act of plagiarism? No way.' People like Glenn Poshard are Jessica Seinfeld without the team of experts. |