As I become engaged in a College commitee regarding plagiarism, I have begun to sense connections with my recent intellectual interests (see Code of Friendship). Believe me; now one is more suprpised than I. However, plagiarism is clearly related to copyright and intellectual property (i.e. authorship). It is also obviously a question of ethics (i.e. a “code” of friendship). As I write in that post, ethical codes might be understood as cryptographic and/or steganographic. Furthermore, one might add into this mix, as I do in my post on steganography and memory, that these same processes relate to the anamorphic gaze articulated by Lacan. If, as is often discussed, Hamlet mis/recognizes his father’s ghost; a similar anamorphosis occurs in the author’s mis/recognition of the text as “his” child (think about this in the terms of the patriarchy interrogated by Derrida in “Plato’s Pharmacy”). All of which brings me full circle to the notion of the ethics of authorship. I have already brought together several of these themes in my most recent post on plagiarism (I hate to be so self-referential, but then I wouldn’t want to plagiarize myself).

In any case, that is what I see as the intellectual-philosohpical context for the practical institutional problem of plagiarism. And despite the way many academics continue to deride “theory,” I believe this context can actually help us in the following ways.

The problems with Cortland’s Academic Integrity policy are explicit in the wording of the policy itself, which states:

The College is an academic community whose mission is to promote scholarship through the acquisition, preservation, and transmission of knowledge.

In other words, knowledge is a static object that exists in the world to be acquired, preserved, and/or transmitted. There is no mention of the production of knowledge, no sense of knowledge as a process. I suppose this suggests that research is a process of “acquiring” knowledge that exists in the world but is unknown, that rather than making knowledge we “discover” it pre-existing in the world. However, even given this questionable premise, it is still rather disturbing to equate discovery with acquiring (it seems roughly equivalent to Columbus “discovering” America and simultaneously “acquiring” it for Spain). Furthermore, it reifies a capitalist marketplace of ideas. If knowledge is indeed to be acquired rather than made, then it makes far more sense for me to purchase that knowledge than to try to “make” it myself.

Indeed, if knowledge is a static object, as my College defines it, then what is the purpose of a writing “process,” except perhaps as a vehicle for correcting factual and/or grammatical errors. The entire concept of a writing process, as I see it, is that knowledge is produced through the act of writing. If we are working on the notion of knowledge as static, then a writing process is a purely punitive/corrective mode where students are judged for incorrectly acquiring knowledge or failing to preserve/transmit it properly. Furthermore, in such an approach to knowledge, students would have virtually no access to “original” knowledge. In short, everything would need to be cited, except for “common knowledge,” and I’m not sure what that would comprise: the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776? an atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima? the Tet Offensive was a decisive moment in the Vietnam War?

Instead, it is necessary for us to recognize that information/knowledge is a process. Ask a cognitive scientist or a cyberneticist if information is produced in the act of communication in a reciprocal relationship between entities or if it is statically transmitted. Ask a philosopher who has studied epistemology or phenomenology if knowledge is a process or a static object. Ask an artist or a poet. Now I would certainly want to argue that this process is shaped by cultural-ideological institutions, material contexts, embodied experiences, technologies and so on: I am not a neo-Romantic. And that’s the kicker, our notions of originality (and hence plagiarism) come largely from Romantic notions of creation. However, our concept of knowledge does not really permit such originality to take place (short of divine inspiration). It’s a no-win situation.

This brings me to my final point (thankfully), which is the problem with hinging judgment on the concept of dis/honesty. Two examples: first a POW who gives false information to his captors. Is this dishonest? Or more metaphorically, but perhaps more to the point: if we can imagine ethically killing another in self-defense, can plagiarism also be a form of self-defense? Here I would reference Foucault’s work on confessional technologies and the panopticon. The ultimate question being this: is it ethical to expect honesty from individuals who are placed under duress in an unethical situation? Take the POW. It is ethical, under the rules of engagement, for an army to take prisoners. It is ethical for them to question that soldier (though not to torture). The soldier has the right to refuse to answer questions, but does s/he have the right to lie?

Commonly, students write papers for courses in which they make arguments that don’t agree with because they believe they will do better in the class if they tell the teacher what they think he/she wants to hear. Is this academic dishonesty? Would it be dishonest for me to write an article espousing a belief I disagreed with b/c I knew the editors and reviewers of the journal would publish it (recall the Sokal Affair) when they would reject an article the reflected my true belief? Are these not, in essence, cases of plagiarism, where I am claiming an idea to be my own when it is not? However, have not the teacher and/or journal, and the College conspired to put me in this unethical position? As a student I need to write the paper and get a good grade; as a professor, I need to publish.

This is the problem with “honesty” as a concept: it is hinged in a fundamental dishonesty or lie. That lie is that honesty, typified by confession, will set you free, that truth, like the knowledge described above, is static and self-evident.

I am not interested in ascribing noble or revolutionary motives to plagiarizers. I imagine that in most cases it is a matter of a short-cut (out of laziness or lack of time) or a reaction to the fear that one’s own writing or ideas will not be adequate. However, I also believe that these acts emerge, at least in part, out of a sense (albeit subconscious) that the classroom is already an unethical and dishonest space.

Students engage in illegal file-sharing of MP3’s in part because its free but also b/c they have a sense that the marketplace is trying to control them, cheat them, and take their money. And who can say that this is not the case? That mass media does not attempt to exercise control over us, to convince us to spend our money in certain ways, to shape our cultural values, etc. etc.? Is this ethical? honest? If not, then why should we expect ethical, honest behavior in return from consumers? Again, it is a fundamental dishonesty at the heart of the marketplace, one of the contradictions of capitalism.

Addressing the concepts of plagiarism and academic dishonesty then mean entering into a discussion of how power functions in the classroom, the unethical operation of disciplinary knowledge, and the way in which students are positioned in the classroom that plagiarism approaches a situation of self-defense.

The ultimate academic dishonesty lies in the intellectually bankrupt articulation of knowledge and discourse that shapes the College.