Article Review #4: "Plagiarism, originality, assemblage"

 Johnson-Eilola, J., & Selber, S. A. (2007). Plagiarism, originality, assemblage. Computers and Composition, 24(4), 375-403.

Again, here's an ODU-proxy link to the article: Johnson-Eilola and Selber (2007)

Continuing to delve into the research I began last week with Howard’s interrogation of plagiarism and the author, I have chosen another article that deals with some of the intertextuality issues that cropped up in last’s week review. Although the article title, “Plagiarism, Originality, Assemblage” suggests a balanced discussion of three topics, Johnson-Eilola and Selber (2007) focus their energy on explaining and exploring assemblage, suggesting that our ideas about plagiarism and originality can be more honestly unpacked and redefined through a pedagogy of assemblage. They ask the reader to consider “what happens . . . if we tell our students that their goal is not to create a new, unique text but to filter and remix other texts in ways that solve concrete problems or enact real social action” (p. 380).

Johnson-Eilola and Selber offer the following definition of their key term: “assemblages are texts built primarily from existing texts in order to solve a written or communication problem in a new context” (p. 381). The three distinct components of this definition each ask scholars to consider new ways of thinking about the text, about plagiarism, and about what we value in writing:

“Built primarily from existing texts”

Assemblage, first and foremost, relies on the interplay of parts, and most often those parts come from texts that have already been written. Valuing this type of practice, then, calls to mind Foucault’s musings about the author function and asks us to consider the equation between authorship and ownership in the context of the trappings of particular social systems (namely, capitalism and patriarchy). Remixing and reassembling texts into a new text asks us to consider (even hope) that text will offer some insight that is greater than merely the sum of its parts.
  
“To solve a written or communication problem”
  
Remix, pastiche, collage, assemblage: whatever name we give it, the value of the text and what it can do outweighs any “right” the original author may claim (nevermind the issue of how in the world we decide what “original” means, or if it can mean anything at all). Johnson-Eilola and Selber insist that they hope “to change the goal of writing from performance to action or effect in context” (p. 380). Instead of asking our students to perform for us (to show us some authorial genius), we should encourage writing that does something.
  
“In a new context”
  
This section of the definition is perhaps the most exciting, because it considers that a new context may be just the permission we need to validatre remixing as good writing practice. I would suggest the the rise of new media, as much as it has raised the dander of a group that fears a new wave of plagiarism, has also allowed us to redefine our ideas about the author and the text and just why we feel the way we do when we hear the word “plagiarism.”

My only challenge to the authors, then, is one of balance: do we also have an obligation to show students what might be expected in terms of source usage in more traditionally-framed academic discourses? For example, our presentation of assemblage and the remix, however liberating, may be at odds with what is expected when a student is asked to write about the implications of the Monroe Doctrine in a history course or the possible complications of gastric bypass surgery in a nursing course. How, then, do we offer up assemblage as valid writing while still addressing institutional and sociopolitical concerns about copyright and authorship? I think the answer lies in presenting students with the continuum, with more performative models of authorship at one end and more action-oriented models at the other. This fits nicely with the project I’m developing for this class, which involves asking students to create two versions of the same document: a traditional, MLA-cited essay and a remixed, “assemblage” version. By presenting the two extremes side-by-side (and by asking students to create both types of writing on the same topic), I hope to get to the heart of many of these issues while still giving my students the practical knowledge they need to survive writing assignments in a variety of types of classes.