in which Amy sounds pretty smaht
Mike over at vitia has posted a summary/review of my "bullshit" paper at C's. I only wish I'd had the term "word-wanking" in my vocabulary before today. Imagine the uses to which it could be put!
Thanks, Mike, for being such a good listener.
posted by aerobil @ 6:36 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
You were right, your blog IS making you famous. Well your work is anyway and that's something.
Thanks for an awesome presentation, and I figure I should acknowledge that I'm totally citing it in my diss's final chapter. And I'm kicking myself for not finding your blog earlier, especially since I so liked your CE piece.
But, OK, I gotta ask about an aside you made in your presentation: you mentioned your strong interest in plagiarism issues. And yet what you talked about was all about class.
I saw the step from academic discourse to class in your presentation. Could you talk some about where the second step takes place, from academic discourse to plagiarism, and thereby (somehow) to class? Are you doing Marxist stuff on appropriation, or something else? Cause you know I'm so there.
Mike,
Good question--one that I'm still working through. The relationship between class and bullshit is clear to me. The relationship between plagiarism and bullshit is becoming as clear for me. In fact, I'm in the middle of writing about it. The connection among all three has to do with the production of plagiarism as text and with the EFFECTS of plagiarsm, especially the affective effects. Scholarship on plagiarism has so far primarily focused on definition, prevention, and detection. I want to argue that we can learn a few things about our discourses of plagiarism--and our ambivalence about plagiarism--by considering what Frankfurt has to say about something we're likely not all that ambivalent about: bullshit. Frankfurt says two things that matter here: First, he says that what's wrong with a counterfeit is not what it looks like or does but *how it was made.* Production. Second, people generally respond more benignly to bullshit than they do to lies. Which makes me wonder where plagiarism lies on the bullshit/lie spectrum (if there is such a thing). But more importantly, his claim allows me to draw attention to our affective responses to plagiarism, especially our investment in anger and reproach.
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