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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZQvHOv5fDA

As Biko kindly reminds us, there was a time when Cuba's Fidel Castro
without any bad conscience or respect for international copyright
laws, was happily printing and making carbon mass copies of American
textbooks and it must have been around this time that Fidel was saying
that , "No one has a copyright over the alphabets."

No mono-poly over alpha-bets !

Some people know that the Almighty created the world through the 22
Letters of the Hebrew alphabet!

And you ask, "Do all these grammar translate to the fact that writers
can now copy
other writers' works verbatim and append their names as the owners of
those works without being required to give credit to the original
owners? "

That's only one quarter of the story. Not to mention, dear Chidi, some
brazen men who might have had the temerity to write with their own
hands and from their own imagination, claim that it is "the word of
God"

http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/corneliushamelberg/





On Mar 4, 4:12 pm, Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi.op...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Do all these grammar translate to the fact that writers can now copy
> other writers' works verbatim and append their names as the owners of
> those works without being required to give credit to the original
> owners? I ask because my Motor Park mentality does not seem able
> anymore to understand what is going on here now on plagiarism.
>
> CAO.
>
> On 4 Mar, 08:18, Biko Agozino <bikoz...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > 'No one has a copyright over the alphabets'. - Fidel Castro
>
> > Biko
>
> > ________________________________
> >  From: basil ugochukwu <ugochukw...@yahoo.com>
> > To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
> > Sent: Monday, 4 March 2013, 6:48
> > Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okigbo - Mythmaker & towncrier at Heavensgate
>
> > There's even more on "Plagiarism and Originality" from Mark Twain here
>
> > ________________________________
> >  From: Biko Agozino <bikoz...@yahoo.com>
> > To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
> > Sent: Sunday, March 3, 2013 3:02:19 PM
> > Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okigbo - Mythmaker & towncrier at Heavensgate
>
> > "Regarding the creative process, let it be understood that I am not necessarily
> > speaking of originality. I have read critiques of artistic works that appear to make originality
> > the benchmark of creativity, blithely dismissing such a work on the grounds that it is not
> > 'original'. Some masterful works – in all genres – have been produced
> >  that are based on
> > deliberate imitativeness. Or plagiarism. There are different kinds of plagiarism, some can
> > actually emerge as a new product of its kind, a kind of creative provocation, or a
> > commentary on the original, sometimes a sleight of expectations or attribution – what is
> > sometimes called signification – especially in American literary discourse. So, we are not
> > speaking here of originality." Wole Soyinka, speech at FESPACO 2013
>
> > ________________________________
> >  From: kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu>
> > To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
> > Sent: Sunday, 3 March 2013, 12:13
> > Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okigbo - Mythmaker & towncrier at Heavensgate
>
> > i once wrote at great length about beyala's plagiarisms, about ben okri's pain at being plagiarized by her, etc etc. what struck me most was her denial (in the face of overwhelming evidence), her weaseling over the issue, her cheesy exploitation of "african oral literature" as an excuse. it was in striking contrast with ouologuem's wonderful, in your face "Lettre a la france negre" in which he bravely asserted his revolutionary defiance of capitalist copyright ownerships of texts. (the spirit of 1968).
> > the topic is indeed interesting, fascinating--not the space for pure
> >     legalism or tedious moralism, nor for dumb pretentiousness. we use
> >     the term "intertext" in lit crit to signify that relationship
> >     between an original text and a later version. shakespeare had his
> >     famous intertexts, and, in fact, there is no such thing as any work
> >     of literature that does not ground itself, in one way or another, in
> >     that which preceded it. okigbo used poems that had already appeared
> >     in print, and i've read ikhide's essay on this, and applaud him for
> >     signalling it. we can place the one poem next to the earlier version
> >     of the other, and see how okigbo's delicate sensibility led him to
> >     change this word or that. we might have liked it better if he had
> >     said something like "in tribute of..." as djibri diop mambety does
> >     to "the great old man," durrenmatt, on which he based his
> >     masterpiece Hyenas. anyone who has actually read durrenmatt's Visit
> >     of the Old Lady will note that the borrowing was significant, not at
> >     all loose. the acknowledgment a sign of djibril diop's integrity.
> > my great amusement over the beyala affair, when she was being sued
> >     by ben okri's publisher, was that she won the Grand PRix du Roman,
> >     the highest award in france, given by the academie francaise in
> >     1996, the same year that one of the members of the academie that
> >     voted her the award was himself also charged with plagiarism!! she
> >     plagiarized from many sources, some extremely extensively. again my
> >     shock was in discovering that one of her prime sources was from
> >     dangarembga herself, Nervous Conditions having been translated into
> >     french. maybe she figured anglophones wouldn't notice.
> > ken
>
> > On 3/2/13 1:17 PM, Ikhide wrote:
>
> > "The enduring legacy of Labyrinths can be traced to a number of reasons. The romance of the poet's life and death. Also, the uncontainable and uncontaminable passion of Okigbo lovers. But in the main – and this is the point – because, in th...e words of one of his protégés, "Okigbo wrote damn good poetry." "O mother mother Earth, unbind me; let this be/The ram's hidden wish to the sword the sword's/secret prayer to the scabbard." In other words, we have in Okigbo that vintage poetry that makes "broadcast with/eunuch-horn of seven valves": the poetry that remains evergreen."
>
> > >- Dr. Hyginus Ekwuazi, poet and writer, lecturer in the
>
> >                 Department of Theatre Arts, University of Ibadan
>
> > >http://sueddie.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/okigbo-mythmaker-towncrier-at...
>
> > >I very much enjoyed this essay on the poet Christopher Okigbo, very fascinating ( I can't get enough of Okigbo so ignore me). I do think though that scholars should also endeavor to talk about the plagiarism issues that plagued Okigbo and his works. A few years back, I wrote an essay on the issue, Christopher Okigbo's voice. Rather than diminishing him, such conversations would only add to the rich complexity that is his life.
>
> > >- Ikhide
>
> > >Stalk my blog athttp://www.xokigbo.com/
> > >Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
> > >Join me on Facebook:www.facebook.com/ikhide
>
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