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

hi chidi
why call it stealing when it was common practice and not regarded as
illegal or immoral? using other texts, thinkers, words, we all do it.
and we acknowledge it nowadays, whereas in the past people didn't. i am
not commenting on okigbo here, but on shakespeare. was he stealing or
using the earlier stories? was it hidden, or simply known and common
practice? to me there is an ethical question that this distinction
implies. in fact, it might be very interesting to ask when the notion of
wrongness attached to plagiarism came into existence, when copyrighting
and its implications became applicable to authors.
also, no one is using the work "intertextuality" here, referring again
the the relationship of a text to another. it isn't plagiarism either,
unless attempts to disguise this are made...as of course does happen.

ken

On 3/14/13 9:03 AM, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote:
> Mazi Cornelius,
> I am getting tired of all these; "I do not support plagiarism,
> but………" "Shakespeare and others plagiarized", what the heck! If you
> do not support plagiarism, why the "but"? If Shakespeare and others
> illegally used cocaine for instance, does that justify the illegal use
> of cocaine?
>
> What is the difference between stealing of Intellectual property and
> the stealing of private or public property? Isn't it what the Nigerian
> politicians in Abuja and in the various state capitals and the pick-
> pockets at the bus stops do and we call for their arrest, prosecution
> and imprisonment? Why do we not call for the mentoring of these
> stealing politicians and the pick-pockets instead?
>
> CAO.
>
>
> On 14 Mar, 00:14, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelb...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> " If on the other hand he merely copies my whole poem and appends his
>> name to that, then I would invite him to mentorship in the art of
>> writing poetry the like of which he cherished so much he approproated
>> all without qualms."
>>
>> That was agood one!.
>>
>> On Mar 13, 11:32 pm, Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbet...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Ken:
>>> I thoroughly agree with your analysis here. It is best to let students see context if possible of Okigbos borrowing. I thank Mwalimu ikhide from bringing this out. The twists and turns of Okigbo's remodelling these phrases are now clear for all to see. the sea from seaward to heavenward indeed trumps the original composition and we must give Okigbo credit for this as well as the introduction of an old star which accentuates the messianic register.
>>> By the way ken I did not intend to dodge your question. If any one plagiarized up to fifty percent of my poem to write his poem. I would fee honored that he feels the poem is good enough to be the foundation of his poem. industrious critics like mwalimu Ikhide will point to the original source and my poetry would be more appreciated as giving birthe to a lovelier fragment. If on the other hand he merely copies my whole poem and appends his name to that, then I would invite him to mentorship in the art of writing poetry the like of which he cherished so much he approproated all without qualms.
>>> Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:36:04 -0400
>>> From: har...@msu.edu
>>> To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
>>> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okigbo - Mythmaker & towncrier at Heavensgate
>>> there are issues and issues here, and i think the previous discusses
>>> have shed more light on what is at stake than what we could get by
>>> simply saying it is a plagiarism and dismissing it.
>>> i am willing to say something is a plagiarism, and still say,
>>> nonetheless, it is a great poem. (i agree that the one below is less
>>> than great)
>>> so, we have different issues: the plagiarism entails at least two
>>> things: honesty, and the law over property. but there is no law for
>>> aesthetic value, certainly none that is violated if someone
>>> plagiarized. some of okigbo's plagiarized verse is immortal, and i
>>> am fine with that. if i were to teach it, to be honest, i'd refer my
>>> students to the original, and then might well say, look what he did
>>> with that.
>>> we do this all the time: if a text is based on a biblical story, we
>>> tell the students to read the original so they can understand what
>>> the author was doing with it. that is how i was educated, in the
>>> 1960s, and no one ever mentioned plagiarism. it is rather a question
>>> of sources, trying to become educated enough to recognizes sources
>>> as a partof becoming a literature major.
>>> we don't do that anymore. we don't expect students to recognize
>>> anything, especially not biblical!! that went out about 25 years
>>> ago. on the other hand, we use turnitin to check on our students'
>>> papers, and fail them if they plagiarize.
>>> the issues aren't the same
>>> lastly, nobody invents a discourse. we all use what came before, and
>>> reshape it. authors are the same: they reshape the language, genres,
>>> styles, forms that they learned when reading, and give them their
>>> own special quality. we read a few sentences, now, and say, aha,
>>> that must be ikhide. and we might say, wow, i see traces of soyinkan
>>> irony in his prose. no one calls that plagiarism.
>>> ken
>>> On 3/12/13 2:42 PM, Ikhide wrote:
>>> Obi,
>>> Anyone not familiar
>>> with Chris Okigbo's body of work would be startled by this,
>>> as I stated in my essay, Christopher Okigbo's voice:
>>> Here are lines from Alberto
>>> Quintero Alvarez: "What departs leaves on the shore/Gazing
>>> seawards at the star foreseen;/What arrives announces its
>>> farewell/Before a coming-and going that goes on for ever.
>>> Here is Okigbo: "An old
>>> star departs, leaves us here on the shore/Gazing heavenward
>>> for a new star approaching;/The new star appears,
>>> foreshadows its going/Before a going and coming that goes on
>>> forever…"
>>> There is no sugarcoating it, if this is not plagiarism, then
>>> nothing else will be. And by the way, there is nothing
>>> particularly brilliant about this, just cheesy blatant copying
>>> od someone's work.
>>> I think what many of us readers are saying to important
>>> scholars like you, Ken Harrow and Professor Olayinka Agbetuyi
>>> is that addressing this important part of Okigbo's work does
>>> not diminish him. Ironically, what diminishes him is the
>>> relentless dismissal of the plagiarism issue by African
>>> scholars. Your responses have been less than compelling in the
>>> face of overwhelming evidence of unacknowledged "overt
>>> influences." You all need to start from a plausible place and
>>> then give context and a defense of what happened.
>>> Okigbo is not the first writer to be accused of plagiarism.
>>> There will be more. Take Teju Cole's book, Open City. There
>>> have been discussions about the influence of W.G. Sebald's
>>> novels, most especially Rings
>>> of Saturn on Cole's book. I did a long analysis here
>>> in Teju
>>> Cole, palimpsests, and Sebald's ghost. The influence is
>>> considerable, some would say heavy. I think in Cole's case,
>>> charges of plagiarism are overblown, but people are not
>>> crazy to wonder about it.
>>> I respect your expertise and look to you and those I have
>>> mentioned here to educate laymen enthusiasts like myself.
>>> But ultimately, as the consumers, we are the jurors. It is
>>> your job as professionals to convince us. Right now, I am
>>> not feeling any of you. Just saying. Be well, man.
>>> - Ikhide
>>> Stalk my blog atwww.xokigbo.com
>>> Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
>>> Join me on Facebook:www.facebook.com/ikhide
>>> From:
>>> Rex Marinus <rexmari...@hotmail.com>
>>> To:
>>> usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
>>> Sent:
>>> Tuesday, March 12, 2013 1:09 PM
>>> Subject:
>>> RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okigbo - Mythmaker
>>> & towncrier at Heavensgate
>>> Serumaga: Chris, is 'Lament of
>>> the Drums' a poem you wrote?
>>> Okigbo: Well, I really don't
>>> think I can claim to have written it. All I did was
>>> create the drums, and they said what they liked.
>>> Personally I don't believe I'm capable of saying
>>> what the drums have said in that first part: it's
>>> only the long funerary drums that are capable of
>>> saying it and they are capable of saying it only at
>>> that moment when they talk; then they've said it...
>>> So I don't think I can cliam to have written the
>>> poems; all I did was cover the drums; and to create
>>> the situation in which the drums spoke what they
>>> spoke.
>>> - Interview with Robert Serumaga,
>>> Translation Center, Dover Street London, during
>>> the 1965 Commonwealth Arts Festival; published in
>>> African Writers Talking, ed. Denis Dureden et al.
>>> The above is Okigbo making a statement about his
>>> poetic craft. It is a brilliant take on the question
>>> of poetic authority. Conceptually Okigbo's
>>> Afro-modernist practices are linked to the general
>>> principle of high modernism. Okigbo makes clear his
>>> notion of the autonomy of the poetic language and
>>> claims the modernist refuge in "allusion" This
>>> tendency towards the allusive is what many, uninformed
>>> about his poetic praxis, tend to call "plagiarism."
>>> But Okigbo was a master of the form, and his debts to
>>> Eliot, (see "Tradition and the Individual Talent.") is
>>> undeniable. Perhaps even more relevant is the fact
>>> that Ralph Waldo Emerson recognizes the fount of
>>> genius as reflected in a self-aware link to a usable
>>> past. "Genius" Emerson writes, "borrows nobly." In his
>>> seminal work on "Originality and Quotation" Emerson
>>> makes very clear the ways by
>> ...
>>
>> read more »

--
kenneth w. harrow
faculty excellence advocate
distinguished professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
harrow@msu.edu

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.