Thinking about Plagiarism
For grad school, I'm reading through my comps exam list, so there will be many book review and academic rumination posts coming up. I also plan on doing a series of "plagiarism profiles" where I highlight a particular literary figure and talk about the plagiarism controversy surrounding that figure (I'm thinking on Wednesdays). I'm doing it as both notes to myself and because very little information about literary plagiarists is actually readable and detailed in any way, at least on the web. (I believe I've mentioned and recommended Thomas Mallon's book.)
There are some websites on "famous plagiarists" out there, but after doing just a little research on Oscar Wilde, who will probably feature first on my list, I found out that much of what's on those lists is hearsay: grossly incomplete, and mostly inaccurate. Even Wikipedia doesn't have it right; oh the shame!
But in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, I thought I should put up some mention of this famous plagiarist. I've doubted before whether the plagiarism can be wholly divorced from morality--is it just a set of academic rules, an oddity of Western culture, or a principle that upholds academic standards and protects artists; can it be both? I didn't put this story up here to attack the obviously great achievements of this man and the civil rights movement. I bring it up because, while I'm studying plagiarism so closely, I've got to wonder: why does it matter?
I've got a couple answers, but they only serve to complicate this particular case. I think plagiarism matters because originality matters. New ideas (and yes, I think there is such a thing), provide not only increasing advances in science, medicine, and technology, but beauty and power in the humanities (which are, of course, old ideas).
But originality is a tricky thing. Sometimes seeing the same thing from a slightly angle is original, or a mirror/distorted image becomes more valuable than the thing it reflected. Perhaps sometimes time is sufficient as a distortion and can cause the reawakening of an idea to become new, or seem new, or act new. Determining what is plagiarism can be very difficult, because plagiarism is so tied to the tricky concept of originality.
Perhaps the case of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. isn't so odd; he used plagiarized words of love and peace, to speak about something both very original to the people of the age, and very repeated in the course of human history. When have people not struggled for freedoms? And, IF Dr. King's work during school had been caught would he have become as powerful a civil rights leader, or even as effective an orator?
Perhaps if the plagiarism had been caught during his lifetime, he would have been expelled or disgraced, and we would never have heard of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
So, what am I doing here?
Arguing against myself, I guess. People can get pretty worked up about plagiarism, and I'm one of those people, but there is a danger in over-certainty, in claiming truth without testing it. What makes plagiarism interesting to me is that I haven't figured it out. Sure, I have ideas and beliefs about plagiarism, but there always seems to be cases that remind me that plagiarism isn't simply breaking a universal truth (nor is it simply breaking a pesky academic guideline).
If nothing else, the Dr. King case, demonstrates how very complex the issue of plagiarism is.
