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

"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 <obodooha@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 <harrow@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 at www.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 <rexmarinus@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
>> "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. The genius of Okigbo is that you might hear or sense say
>> Carl Sandburg, say in "Silences" and yet be confounded at its purity
>> and novelty in Okigbo. A prolix line of poetry recovered from their
>> langor becomes better, fresher, more categoprical in Okigbo, because
>> Okigbo gives it a new order of movement and a force which only the
>> most powerful poetic imagination is capable. Meanwhile, he does it
>> better than Eliot, who can also be accused of serial poetic
>> "immitation" and "plagiarism" for indeed we see in the body of
>> his modfernist work, lines, words, and echoes that are stolen and
>> borrowed. Poets know, that all poetry has been written. Sometimes, to
>> renew poetry true poets must act as canivores of language and be
>> piratical in their search for it. Okigbo was a master of the
>> intertext. His poetry is a testimony, even in its leaness, of a highly
>> scribal agency of which only few are capable at any moment in history.
>> Obi Nwakanma
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2013 12:13:29 -0500
>> From: harrow@msu.edu
>> To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
>> 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-heavens-gate-by-hyginus-ekwuazi/
>> 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
>> <http://xokigbo.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/christopher-okigbos-voice/>.
>> Rather than diminishing him, such conversations would only add to
>> the rich complexity that is his life.
>> - Ikhide
>> Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/
>> Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
>> Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide
>> <http://www.facebook.com/ikhide>
>>
>>
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>> kenneth w. harrow
>> faculty excellence advocate
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>> michigan state university
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> --
> 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
>
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--
*Obododimma Oha*
Dept. of English
University of Ibadan

Blogs: http://udude.wordpress.com/
http://x-pensiverrors.blogspot.com/
Phone: +234 803 333 1330
+234 802 220 8008
Twitter: @mmanwu
Skype: obododimma.oha

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