Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okigbo - Mythmaker & towncrier at Heavensgate

"Chidi's attempt to draw a white/black distinction is simplistic to
me. Plagiarism cannot just be explained away as an absolute sin. I am
seriously and conceptually perplexed though."
---------Adeshina Afolayan.

Does it have to be complex to be right and/or make sense? Some matters
are simply right or wrong and plagiarism is one of them. You may be
confusing being simple with being simplistic. I have no scholar
colleagues and students to impress. You are however, entitled to your
opinion.

CAO.


On 14 Mar, 21:45, shina73_1...@yahoo.com wrote:
> "Shouldn't we shift the
> debate from outrage to the wider significance and presence of
> plagiarism in canonical literature?"
>
> Obododimma
>
> Given the deep level of controversy around Okigbo's 'borrowing'/'stealing' so far and the problematic and shifting conceptual boundary of plagiarism especially in our own time, it would seem to me that the suggestion above, though interesting, is putting the cart before the horse.
>
> Before this post, I tried getting at the etymology of plagiarism without much success. I was wondering if its early use, circa 1620, would throw some conceptual light on how its meaning has shifted from a pragmatic practice to a perjorative one.
>
> Most dictionaries privilege the 'stealing' assumption. Merriam-Webster traces its origin to the Latin 'plagiarius' meaning kidnapper (derived from 'plagium' or netting of game; and further from 'plaga' or trap). 'Plagiary' was originally used in 1716 (What happened in the 96 years in between?). Ah!
>
> Well, what does this tell us? Lexical definitions often conceal philosophical complexities! Something conceptual must have happened to lead us through this convoluted etymology from seemingly negative origin through a fruitful borrowing to rejuvenation of the original sin. Is there a philologist in the forum?
>
> Chidi's attempt to draw a white/black distinction is simplistic to me. Plagiarism cannot just be explained away as an absolute sin. I am seriously and conceptually perplexed though.
>
> Maybe Prof. Harrow's suggestion of intertexuality could bridge this problem between the positive and negative dimensions of plagiarism.
>
> Adeshina Afolayan
>
> Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Obododimma Oha <obodo...@gmail.com>
>
> Sender: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
> Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:40:16
> To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
> Reply-To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okigbo - Mythmaker & towncrier at Heavensgate
>
> I do NOT endorse plagiarism. It is objectionable and infuriating, yes.
> But with the ongoing debate, I have had to return to deeper issues in
> the discourse on plagiarism and have found the arguments of the
> Critical Art Ensemble (in "Utopian Plagiarism, Hypertextuality, and
> Electronic Cultural Production") really engaging: "Prior to the
> Enlightenment, plagiarism was useful in aiding the distribution of
> ideas. An English poet could appropriate and translate a sonnet from
> Petrarch and call it his own. In accordance with the classical
> aesthetic of imitation, this was perfectly acceptable practice. The
> real value of this activity rested less in the reinforcement of
> classical aesthetics than in the distribution of work to areas where
> otherwise it probably would not have appeared. The works of English
> plagiarists, such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Sterne, Coleridge,
> and De Quincey, are still a vital part of the English heritage, and
> remain in the literary canon to this day."Shouldn't we shift the
> debate from outrage to the wider significance and presence of
> plagiarism in canonical literature?
> -Obododimma
>
> On 3/4/13, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:
> > let's talk examples.
> > for instance:
>
> > A while back on Next, the poet Chimalum Nwankwo offered evidence that
> > Okigbo had plagiarized some of his poems. He quoted Carl Sandberg's
> > poem, For You: /"The peace of great doors be for you./Wait at the knobs,
> > at the panel oblongs./Wait for the great hinges.//The peace of great
> > churches be for you./Where the players of loft pipe organs/Practice old
> > lovely fragments, alone//The peace of great books be for you,/Stains of
> > pressed clover leaves on pages,/Bleach of the light of years held in
> > leather.//The peace of great prairies be for you./Listen among
> > windplayers in cornfields./The wind learning over its oldest music."/
>
> > He contrasted it with Okigbo's The Passage: /"O Anna at the knobs of the
> > panel oblong,/Hear us at the crossroads at the great hinges/Where the
> > players of loft pipe organs/Rehearse old lovely fragments,
> > alone-//Strains of pressed orange leaves on pages/Bleach of the light of
> > years held in leather://For we are listening in cornfields/Among the
> > windplayers,/Listening to the wind leaning over/Its loveliest fragment…."
> > /
>
> > this is an instance in which...i plagiarized ikhide. he did the heavy
> > lifting, and i just copied.
> > which he did from nwankwo.
> > ken
> > p.s.(go read the whole thing if you want the argument, at
> >http://xokigbo.wordpress.com/tag/okigbo/)
> > pps. i always found sandberg boring; now he comes alive!
>
> > On 3/4/13 9:47 AM, Ikhide wrote:
> >> "From a critical point, and having studied Okigbo's work quite
> >> closely, I'm generally amused by those who keep talking about Okigbo's
> >> "plagiarism." Plagiarismn occurs when you do not acknowledge your
> >> sources. What Okigbo does is radical/misprision/, to sometimes upturn,
> >> decontextualize and recontextualize an extant poetic line or imagery,
> >> and in refashioning it give a newer more authentic feel to sometimes
> >> flat or obscure lines. Okigbo was a bold experimentalist, far ahead of
> >> his time in his form of intertextual integration. It was a poetic
> >> practice and method based on the notion later noted by postmodernist
> >> theorists which Okigbo put into practice by a system of collages,
> >> revisisons, reproductions, and re-interpretaions, of the boundedness
> >> of language; or as Derrida would put it: "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte."
> >> Okigbo, I think, is to modern poetry, what Picasso is to the Arts."
>
> >> Obi,
>
> >> Thanks for sharing. These conversations generally devolve into
> >> defensiveness, etc. I think that charges of plagiarism re Okigbo are
> >> not lightly dismissed. I have a copy of the book and in my view
> >> influences are to be distinguished from outright copying. Okigbo does
> >> not address what he was trying to do by basically using other folks'
> >> works and passing them on as his. The lifting is not a line or two,
> >> but pretty extensive. He should have more specifically acknowledged
> >> the authors and the works.  Today, if a student came before you with
> >> works so blatantly lifted, I would hope that you would give the
> >> student a zero and another chance to produce something truly original.
>
> >> My interest is not to diminish the gift that was Okigbo. I am
> >> fascinated that many African scholars choose look at that issue
> >> (plagiarism charges) with a little more than a sideways glance. That
> >> issue is an integral part of Okigbo and addressing it in any work on
> >> Okigbo raises the importance and usefulness of that work. This is one
> >> reason I love to read obituaries by Western journalists. If you read
> >> the obituaries of Dim Ojukwu in the NYT and the UK Guardian, you are
> >> blown away by the depth and breadth of the work that went into it.
> >> Contrast them with the silly hagiographies from Nigerian newspapers
> >> and you shake your head. Much of the work on Okigbo has been
> >> adulatory, useful, but not rounded.
>
> >> Clearly one has to be careful about throwing around charges of
> >> plagiarism. There are clearly influences in writers' works. It is
> >> perhaps impossible to avoid influences and reasonable people can infer
> >> the difference between influences and outright plagiarism. A couple of
> >> days ago, I wrote this short piece
> >> <https://www.facebook.com/ikhide/posts/10151786497904616> about my
> >> maternal uncle Momodu and I used two terms: "he traveled light", and
> >> "How did Uncle Momodu die? He died." Ten words out of a 400 word
> >> piece. The first term is from something I read in James Hadley Chase
> >> many many many moons ago, and Ola Rotimi groupies will remember the
> >> words of the old man Alaka in the play, The Gods are not to Blame. At
> >> the time I was writing the piece, the influences did not occur to me.
> >> I have been reflecting on that since I wrote that piece. But then,
> >> much of my works is influenced by the oral. I try to give credit when
> >> I can but it is never enough. My point in this rambling response to
> >> you is that we could have a thoughtful sensitive conversation about
> >> Okigbo's influences, plagiarism, etc, etc.
>
> >> Be well, man.
>
> >> - Ikhide
> >> Stalk my blog atwww.xokigbo.com<http://www.xokigbo.com/>
> >> Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
> >> Join me on Facebook:www.facebook.com/ikhide
> >> <http://www.facebook.com/ikhide>
>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> *From:* Rex Marinus <rexmari...@hotmail.com>
> >> *To:* usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
> >> *Sent:* Sunday, March 3, 2013 10:16 PM
> >> *Subject:* RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okigbo - Mythmaker &
> >> towncrier at Heavensgate
>
> >> In his interview with Robert Serumaga at the Transcription Center in
> >> London in 1963, Okigbo acknowledged that he took from other poets and
> >> integrated these into the texture of his poetry in answer to the
> >> question about "Limits." Okigbo absorbed a variety of poetic airs from
> >> the classical to the modern; he restates the same fact clearly in the
> >> introduction to his collection /Labyrinths /acknowledging the poets
> >> from whom he had taken to integrate into his poetic expression. There
> >> is a great echo of Tchicaya U'Tami's /Brushfire/ published by the
> >> Mbari books in 1965 in "Path of Thunder," and in fact in rejecting the
> >> Langston Hughes Prize in Dakar in 1966 of which Derek Walcott was 2nd
> >> runner-up and which was later awarded the African American Poet Robert
> >> Hayden, Okigbo wrote, suggesting that it be given to U'Tamsi, "a
> >> better poet than I." He was clear about himself and had not the
> >> impiety of self-regard as a poet.
>
> >> From a critical point, and having studied Okigbo's work quite closely,
> >> I'm generally amused by those who keep talking about Okigbo's
>
> ...
>
> read more »

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