Plagiarism, Originality, Assemblage (Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Stuart A. Selber)

In addition, this highlighted separation is frequently constructed as a hierarchy in terms of the writing process: The best work of writers is understood to be their original text with citations and borrowed materials situated as useful but less valuable support. As we will main- tain, however, this distinction is not only problematic but also counterproductive, especially as teachers attempt to prepare students to be writers in their professional and personal lives. (376)

 If we take either a problem-solving or problem-posing approach, as a great number of people in composition claim to do, then so-called unique texts have little inherent value. Instead, teachers should be encouraging students to learn ways to use existing information to solve real, concrete issues. (378)

What happens, however, if we tell students that their goal is not to create new, unique texts but to filter and remix other texts in ways that solve concrete problems or enact real social action? What if we expect and encourage them to copy other texts? Plagiarism, in these situations, becomes much less of an issue, for students are encouraged to make explicit their borrowings and appropriations. What counts, in this new context, is the ability of students to remix texts in ways that address specific issues, readers, and situations. (380)

And what I'm interested in in the second half of this chapter is the "how to" of helping students to develop such "remix" abilities....

From our perspective, composition still focuses too heavily on the evaluation of performance—in particular, performance tied to the display of one extremely limited and outdated version of originality. We want to change the goal of writing from performance to action or effect in context. That is, we want to lend some weight to a movement that shifts the terrain of the assignment by shifting our approach to writing instruction and assessment: What if 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? Importantly, in this reconception, the assemblages do not distinguish primarily between which parts are supposed to be original and which have been found and gathered from someplace else; assemblages are interested in what works, what has social effects. The distinction between original and existing fragments in a text is, if not meaningless, at least secondary. In essence, we are arguing for a reorganization that is actually implied if not valued in many rubrics for assessing writing used by teachers who take a social approach: Rhetorical purposes can be addressed in context by either original or borrowed/quoted texts without a hierarchy of distinction between the two. (380)

But what happens if we downplay the value of originality? What if we put the emphasis on problem-solving, originality be damned? (380)

But assemblage as a writing practice in academic courses is only beginning to appear on our collective radar screen despite the fact that remixed artifacts are everywhere, all around us, and not just in popular culture. We want teachers to start seeing assemblages as a valid and valued form of student writing—and of writing in general. (380)

In most cases, the recognition of assemblages (often going under related terms such as “remix,” “collage,” or “boilerplate”) is not represented as a replacement of other methods of writing or designing but as one valid practice among many. Our intent here is not to replace the acts of writing prose by individuals but to augment practices by enriching repertoires with one more equally valued approach. (382) ...the nature of doing assemblage work. (383)

On Templates:

Of course, the template instantiates a design vision that speaks directly to the people who first preview it and then download it. This vision involves a rectilinear grid pattern with conventional navigation bar, an area that emphasizes main content, secondary content areas for different categories of subordinate information, and a column with bordered rows for items that should be delineated in some clearly discernable fashion (the placeholder text displays a chronological organization for old news items). Although the designer did not use browser-safe colors, the color scheme is rather conservative, combining medium-ranged blues and grays into a cool, muted pattern. All of these design elements constitute a starting point for making an assemblage. (384)

Sources on Visual Design:

Bernhardt, Stephen A. (1986). Seeing the text. College Composition and Communication, 37, 66–78.

Wysocki, Anne Frances, & Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. (1999). Blinded by the letter: Literacy as a metaphor for every- thing else? In Gail E. Hawisher & Cynthia L. Selfe (Eds.), Passions, pedagogies, and 21st century technologies (pp. 349–368). Logan, UT: Utah State UP.

Types of Assemblages:

Webpages

To take another close-to-hand example, weblogs (including those driven by remixed templates such as those discussed above) are locations for remixing a wide range of materials: quotations from (words, texts, images both still and moving), links to, and sum- maries of other texts on the Web; updates on books, movies, and music the weblog author is currently reading, viewing, or listening to; commentaries on the weblog author’s experiences; short or even long original essays; and more. For many academics (and others), weblogs are a primary form of writing as assemblage and remix. (388)

Johndan’s weblog, for instance, provides examples of many of those forms of assemblage: template, link, summary, text, image, and original text. (388)

a mix of original and found content from numerous sources. (389)

A traditional approach in composition would create at least two hierarchical levels of value among these materials: The quotations, links, and default elements of the template would be valued less than the original text (original images, personal narrative, and summaries). After all, one might say, the other materials were all pre-existing: Johndan merely found them. (390)

While we could continue to maintain that original composition and remixing lie on different planes of value, the distinction between the two planes or levels seems increasingly difficult to maintain. In part, we provided these examples to respond to the concern that remixing is tantamount to stealing.

That view misses what is really going on, at least in many projects. First, creating assemblages requires the same rhetorical sophistication as any text: One must do much more as a designer than download templates and replace their placeholder items with real content. Second, the designs on which assemblages are based introduce another element into the rhetorical situation, making that situation all the more complex and challenging. Third, those designs themselves often derive from conventional practices that cannot be attributed to a single person or project—practices that, in a very real sense, reside in the public domain, the commons. Fourth, many assemblages make their borrowings explicit or obvious, even trading on their connections to other work. Fifth, and finally, the communities that support assemblage practices encourage exchange and re-appropriation. In fact, some of these communities exist only to sustain remix processes and products. Although there are legal and ethical issues to consider (which we raise in the final section), the context for assemblages is decidedly rhetorical. (391)

the “original” versus “borrowed” hierarchy (399)

We want to argue that quotation and plagiarism continue to be largely connected, in a hierarchy of value with theft at the bottom and art at the top (not withstanding Picasso’s “Good artists borrow; great artists steal,” a maxim often cited but only rarely fully embraced except as a postmodern-ironic rhetorical move). Assemblage remains caught in the middle of this hierarchy, positioned as something slightly better than plagiarism (when properly attributed) but not as valuable as an author’s original text. (399)


The difficulty, for us at least, comes because that honesty is not just honesty for honesty’s sake but framed in the hierarchy we have been discussing: part of a binary arrangement between “original” text and “borrowed” text. Students are told to be honest about making clear the division between the two so that we, as teachers, can more effectively place primary value on the original text in our assessments. (400) But if we take away that hierarchy, we remove the impulse for students to lie about it. If a piece of the assemblage is valued primarily for its function rather than its place in a hierarchy, students are no longer pushed so hard to hide the citations for their sources. In fact, if skills at making assemblages are made the focal point, then teachers would want to put great value on the ability of students to find existing chunks of text they can reuse. Re-inventing the wheel becomes an inefficiency, a misplaced waste of effort. “You borrowed that chunk? Great! Where did you get it from? Maybe I can use it, too.” (400)

In the end, as we see it, this all comes down to a reconfigured notion of “creativity,” one more in line with postmodern work. Creativity is no longer, as we said, re-inventing the wheel, which does not remove creativity but shifts it to the assemblage: Take what already exists and make something else, something that works to solve problems in new, local contexts. Creativity, in this rearticulation, involves extensive research, filtering, recombining, remixing, the making of assemblages that solve problems. Citation is no longer a way of marking subordinate elements in a text to downplay their value in student work but a way to reward students for their new skills, to situate texts not only in pre-existing but new contexts. (400)

Learning to value assemblage and remix as valid practices and products in writing... (400)

Producing original text in the form of an essay or report is only one possible response—not necessarily the best possible response—among many. So while a writing pedagogy might focus on the production of original text in some instances, it might also focus just as productively on assemblage, remix, or collage in the same way. At a broad level, admitting such forms to our pedagogy requires we avoid automatically slotting them into a hierarchy that limits their value in specific situations. (400)

The shift we are suggesting is a pretty simple if powerful one: Stop encouraging students to produce “original” texts all the time. Tell them, at least occasionally, to work on texts that are complete assemblages. (400)