I'm trying to think through Malcolm Gladwell's piece in the recent (11.22.2004) New Yorker -- "Something Borrowed: Should A Case of Plagiarism Ruin Your Life?" -- in which he relays and puzzles over the account of how his previous New Yorker article "Damaged" (1997) was reproduced in Bryony Lavery's play "Frozen." I say "reproduced" and not "plagiarized" in order to try to further embody the point Gladwell makes throughout and rather surprisingly in his piece: that even though large portions of his original article were copied directly from his article and into the play, as in word-for-word, in their new dramatic form they took on new artistic lives of their own, imbued like so many Cambell's Soup Cans maybe, rendering an accusation of plagiarism counter-cultural and base.

What complicates Gladwell's desire to cut his words free, let them go, blow off the details of plagiarism in a celebration of the arts in the form of the play "Frozen," is that the original article that was so deftly cribbed involved a recognizable life: Dorothy Lewis' life and work as a gutsy psychiatrist committed to working with serial-killing psychos. So the rip-off, if it is one, is two-fold: the article is jacked, but so is the life rendered therein ... in a sense. But it's also modified. You get the picture: complicated. And this is what Gladwell manages so assiduously to consider and write around and through in his piece.

Finding myself fresh off a panel discussion with the student-cheating-and-plagiarism wonk Don McCabe, I found myself taking particular interest in the piece. McCabe, has been polling members of the academic community (undergrads, grads, profs) for over a decade, and finds what most of us already know: cheating and plagiarism are rampant. In Gladwell's article, what is poignant and goofy is that the playwrite seems to have been so clued out that she was ever doing anything wrong or even marginally questionable. "I just didn't think I was doing the wrong thing ... and then the article comes out in the New York times and every continent in the world" (48).

Anyone who mediates between instructors and students in instances of suspected plagiarism is entirely too familiar with this claim on behalf of cut-and-paste writers (sic?) that they "didn't know they were doing anything wrong." But now, having said this, several lines of predictable argument/inquiry could follow. I could say, for instance, that they DO know what they did wrong, and that any claim to the contrary is subterfuge. Otherwise, why would they so selectively and strategically plagiarize? I mean, come on, how could anyone exist in this culture for more than ten minutes and not know about the value placed on "original" textual labor that can then become commodified and marketable as such? The iconic everyday (TM) teaches us all that. Alt., I could take the line of inquiry/argument that says that it doesn't matter if the cut-and-paste writer knew s/he was doing something wrong, it is their responsibility as a writer and engaged citizen to know the rules of the society.

Bleagh. But why go there, why bother, when my real concern is that few of us (myself included) know why this kind of unoriginal composition is problematic in ethical terms in the first place. I mean really: is there anything "wrong" with plagiarizing/sampling/recirculating ideas and language? Is it merely a problem of "taking credit"? Is it wrong because all labor deserves remuneration? Because even that claim is vaguely warped. Does this kind of composition erode social values and the structure of genuine intellectual inquiry/cultural production in the ways it seems promoted to do? Does a cribbed play that people enjoy pose any real threat as a cribbed text, the point pushed aside for the moment that it may be slanderous? (Pointed out by Gladwell.)

The other afternoon, at this panel I keep referring to, after we panelists had paneled, a professor in the audience stood up and asked a question. "How can I get my Computer Science students to stop plagiarizing? How can I get them to see that it is wrong to copy another person's work and turn it in as your own? They just don't see it as unethical!"

This guy is looking, it seems, for a way to teach the ethic of original composition ... but how can such ethics be articulated without also being critiqued as fetishizing the solitary writer and the marketplace of (TM) textual products? And even moreso, I am concerned, how can we advocate for this aspect of academic integrity when so many other aspects of our acaemico-socio-cultural fabric is so lacking in integrity?