Hi. My name is Annaluna2369 and I am a “patchwriter.” (cue the laugh track)
So, reading the first bit of Howard’s book, I was surprised that I, Ms. Integrity, would be branded a cheater, a criminal, a…plagiarist! While reading, I frantically tried to recall every piece of writing I have ever done – did I unknowingly do the unspeakable?
I was particularly interested in the passage on page 7 of Howard’s book in the section on patchwriting as learning,
“…students’ patchwriting is often a move toward membership in a discourse community, a means of learning unfamiliar language and ideas. Far from indicating a lack of respect for a source text, their patchwriting is a gesture of reverence.”
And
“…To join this conversation, the patchwriter employs the language of the target community.”
For someone like me, who is struggling to assimilate into grad school, first year, I have this anxiety about contributing original work to the collective pool, when I’m still trying to learn how to swim. I don't mean copying and pasting Foucault into a paper, but how do I write something new? How do I join the conversation?
Now, I wonder (I’m changing topics). Can someone expand a little on “liberal culture ideology” and “social-democratic rhetoric”? I could Google it, but it would be great to hear from others what they know about it and, especially for those who are teaching right now, how it applies in your classroom.
5 comments:
Patchwriting looks like what I would call paraphrasing (yes we already have a term for this and didn't need a cute little coined phrase to muddy the waters), and if accompanied by "citation and documentation" (a redundancy) that is not in fact considered plagiarism. From which universe is Howard writing?
I don't think you need to stress at all about this, annaluna. Just cite your sources. It is fine to use others' work to build upon. We really have to. We have to do the research and understand what is in the conversation already. That is how we develop our own original ideas ... spotting a gap in conversation, or being inspired to push something further, or to disagree with something, or to throw our weight on one side of the argument.
Howard says this is all a part of learning. No! Really? For my money, by the time a student hands in a final paper, the teacher should have darn well larned that kid to cite properly. If the student didn't pay attention or didn't learn the citation process, that is a failure to learn on his/her part and that should indeed be penalized. This is a part of the learning process that should happen before (!) the final paper gets handed in. In fact, well before that.
My brother had trouble with this his first year in college, and nearly got an F in his class, so I do feel sympathetic to students not knowing or being familiar with our citation rules. However, students are there to learn and the teacher should ensure they know how to cite properly.
Like on page 11, that "plagiarized" version looks perfectly fine to me, considered in light of being incorporated into a larger paper as an example of studies. There is a proper introduction of Witkin and page citation bracketing the material taken from Witkin. Am I nuts? Do people seriously consider this plagiarism? Isn't Howard setting up a straw man?
Howard is my Foucault for this class; her reference to liberal culture ideology and social-democratic rhetoric confirms my view of her concupiscent circularity, as all she is doing is setting up a false dichotomy.
By the way, concupiscence is a medieval theological reference: "In your excessive self-love you are like a molecule closed in upon itself and incapable of entering easily into any new grouping" (Teilhard de Chardin). For me, it represents insular or circular thinking.
I am inclined to agree with ehrengard on her first and third post - to which I will add later. The passage on page 11, however, is clearly a case of plagiarism (thinly disguised and very poorly executed). Unless my book differs, none of the direct quotes have quotation marks, and the clumsy, indirect "were said to be" syntax hardly paraphrases the ideas that follow.
I, as Howard would it appears, would have a conference with this student and explain (reiterate to be sure) proper quoting and paraphrasing. In short, I would treat such writing as "inadvertent" plagiarism and give the student a chance to correct it.
The general problem with Howard's thesis is that she credits postmodern assumptions about author, text, and reader as expressing some kind of truth about the academic writing we encounter in composition. She contends (by citing others) that Romantic notions of author ignored audience, or readers, and asserts (by citing others) that the postmodern model more accurately reflects academic writing today. Since it is difficult to find any original thinking in her work ("I would assert that all the writing that we all do all the time is patchwriting" (14) - speak for yourself, Dr. Howard), it does not surprise me that she defends writing that is not original. What I find amusing, though, is that Howard cites Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room, a decidedly "original" work, while arguing that originality really does not exist.
The scarecrows she erects in Parts I and II could fill all of Oz. I will save my comments on these for class (sorry, Dr. Reyman). Nevertheless, agreeing with Foucault to be "wary of the search for origins" (68) places Howard squarely in the trenches with the flat earthers who refuse to come out of indeterminate hiding to learn why human beings adamantly impose penalties for the transgression of plagiarism. Our species has a moral nature that in many ways is instinctive. Cooperative social creatures who live in groups must be certain that no one cheats. It is instinctive to our nature. True, plagiarism is a cultural construct, which is why different cultures treat it differently. To the West, it is stealing (read the Bible about that transgression). Nevertheless, if a culture different than ours treated plagiarism as theft, you can be assured a heavy price would be paid by the cheater - you know, such as losing a hand.)
Sorry, I forgot to mention that liberal culture ideology and social-democratic rhetoric, ironically, reflect Romantic notions of human perfectability. The only problem is that we know better today. Humans do not evolve toward some grand egalitarian state, and it is decidedly not a part of human nature to share equally. Believing that such ideals either can or do exist do not make them real (perhaps indeterminate).
France and Sweden are social democracies (or controlled capitalism), hence Foucault; liberal culture ideology would suggest a combination New Deal and Great Society style democracy; John Kenneth Galbraith.
The greater irony is that I doubt any of those articulating some kind of leveling in social equality would really want to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi (how elitist is that? who wants free tickets to the big Nascar race in Joliet?). Even Marx and Engels wanted to retain some sort of sinecure for the intelligentsia.
I could be wrong on these concepts, but I really can think of no other logical explanation - except perhaps, intellectual tyranny or fascism.
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