[again, this COULDA gone under abby's criticism thread, but i think the above title is less etc. plus: i didn't want to invade more'n i had to. -- o.t.v.]

This thrush of blood to the Redd' sets the scene:

Quote:

I am a TA at a university. My professor and I are currently in an unusual and very awkward situation, and we could use some advice…
The course in question is an introduction to writing for first-year undergraduates at a Canadian university. They submitted their first full-length papers of the term a week ago, and we’ve been dutifully marking them with the intention of handing them back next week.

We’ve been extra-rigorous when it comes to checking these papers for plagiarism, both because it’s the first real work they’ve submitted and because of a memo sent out to our department back in late August urging every instructor to take greater measures. We’ve been cross-checking passages (especially suspicious ones, but also some that have been randomly chosen) using Google all along the line. We have been finding plagiarists.

Specifically, we have found six plagiarists (out of a class of 50).

All of them are black. And there are no other black students in the class.

[...]

It would seem to be an open and shut case, but the fact that every last one of the students is black is making us hesitate. I don’t know what it’s like in other countries, but in Canada we have a well-established Human Rights Commission that would be all too happy to accommodate some or all of these students bringing both my professor and me up on charges of racial discrimination.

O, Candida!

Hoax or not, it was picked up and commented on at a blog called Sofiastry. This is one of the comments:

Quote:

What a patriarchally oppressive linear mindset that TA has! There are no authors, only texts, which are entirely socially constructed. What does it mean to “write” one’s “own” text? How can one “plagiarize” a text if one cannot singularly “author” it in the first place? It’s as if Derrida labored in vain (which he did, because he didn’t author his texts anymore than I am authoring this comment, but that’s beside the point, which is the only place to be in a radically de-centered “world”). The point is, oppressed peoples of color have other, higher modalities than we text-centric Western cultures. Black people in particular come from an oral/aural culture that is blessedly free of our individualistic text-bound notions that privilege an illusory “originality” in authorship. Attempting to hold them to this oppressive, delusional standard is the very definition of racism. Unless of course the “cheating” students are male and the TA is a womyn, in which case I defer to the holy wisdom inherent in her Earth Goddess womb-mind.

That's worthy of Crews, IMO. But it raises an interesting question:

How has a freud like Derrida become so influential in what was once an at least semi-respectable subject?

Science-envy explains part of it, a-course: ignotum pro magnifico. By pumpin' up the polysyllables and densifyin' the discourse, the English departments could pretend, to themselves at least, that they were saying Deep and Important Things. That "strategy" has been an implicit tribute to the potency of science, but the "text-centric community," as it were, is far from monolithic/monohegemonic and has another strategy up its scientificotropic sleeve: to DENY the potency of science, rather'n play implicit tribute to it. THAT's the route Absquatch has taken, with the assistance of Nietzsche, Vaihinger, Kuhn, Davies, et al. Abby lacks Nietzsche's luDICity, IMO, but not necessarily Nietzsche's luCIDity: I can't complain that Abby's English is obscure. When he wants to conceal an epistemological gap, he does it like this:

Quote:

So, those who are serious about this subject have ample matter to explore. I leave that to them, though, even at the risk of being accused once again (and ignorantly) of empty citation of authority and mere regurgitation. There's a significant difference between that and between providing material for others to make discoveries on their own, and all the playground-level prodding in the world isn't going to induce me to do others' work for them, especially since no one did mine for me.

But it wasn't necessary to say that: there was actually no "work" to do on CAS's statement, in the sense Abby's talking about. Another example of Abby's text-centricity:

Quote:

For the rest:
Rede me and be nott wrothe,
For I saye no thynge but trothe.
I will ascende makynge my state so hye
That my pompous honoure shall never dye.

William Roy

I remember once seeing an English graduate respond to a discussion of physics by quoting from Piers Plowman. He comforted himself at his inability to understand the physics (which was above this monkey's head too) by resorting to something complex and difficult from HIS field of expertise. That wasn't eg-ZACT-ly what Abby was doing by quoting from Roy, but text-centricity was at work all the same. But the world is not a text and science is bigger'n'badder'n philosophy. IMFFHO.

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“The true independent is he who dwells detached and remote from the little herds as well as from the big herd. Affiliating with no group or cabal of mice or monkeys, he is of course universally suspect.” — The Black Book of Gore Vidal.