zakes mda: last words on the difference between plagiarism and intertextuality
I promise this is the last contribution I will make on this debate. I am just glad that the academy here in the USA, where I work understands intertextuality very well, and how it functions. That segment of the academy that has studied my work understands that my fiction was informed by the story of the cattle-killing as INTERPRETED BY JEFF PEIRES. The story of Nongqawuse is a well-known one; as children we actually grew up with it. Our language is replete with proverbs based on that story and we sang songs about her. But I never thought of using the Nongqawuse story in any fiction until Peires wrote his The Dead Will Arise. It was Peires rendition of that story that inspired my fiction, and I had to make that obvious in my fiction. Peires’ phraseology is therefore DELIBERATELY used in my fiction as an intertextual devise - a conversation between The Dead will Arise and The Heart of Redness. And indeed if you consult such search engines as GoogleScholar you will find that quite a few papers have been written on the intertextuality between the two texts. For instance, Sara Colombana of the University of Padua in Italy wrote her thesis on it. She even had a whole list similar to Offenberger’s but at not stage did she use the word “plagiarism” in her work because she has a clear understanding of what intertextuality is in literary fiction and how it functions. So, what to some of you is a new discovery of this “great plagiarism” has been thoroughly studied since, at least, 2002. The academy here, at least those members in the English Departments who are versed with postmodern modes of creating fiction, understand intertexaulity. They understand that the process and methods of creating postmodern fiction are different from those of writing academic texts. Different rules apply. That is why you don’t see anyone from an English Department here taking me to task or punishing me for “plagiarism” - and remember that the academy takes plagiarism very seriously and people lose their jobs because of it. And yet I am still here, operating as a respected scholar in my field. It is not for nothing that great scholars of intertextuality such as Byron Caminero-Santangelo have vigorously defended me in this matter. Finally allow me to quote some comments made to me by a South African philosopher, Aryan Kaganof: ‘what nobody has mentioned in any of these debates: was james joyce a plagiarist? was t.s. eliot a plagiarist? was william shakespeare a plagiarist? whole PARAGRAPHS in their fictions are taken from the king james bible, and from each other sans any risible “footnotes”. the whole idea of putting footnotes in a text belongs to the realm of ludicrous noddy academia. the greatest philosopher of all, nietzsche rarely, almost never used footnotes. and indeed, he also lifted sentences WHOLESALE from schopenhauer, and from the new testament, and from kant, without mentioning where he lifted them from - HE WAS TESTING HIS AUDIENCE, expecting us to read on our toes, to “get” the lifts, as he would have “gotten” the lifts that joyce, as a matter of course, did in his fictions. it was considered a sign of one’s culture, that the well-read reader would recognize and wryly chuckle at the intertextualities, that resonated because the reader “got it”. so how come when you do the same, with a single literary source that you actually credit, is this plagiarism? are you not allowed access to this trope of high literary culture because you are a “local”, and does gray perhaps mean something else when he writes “local”, is that not perhaps what the underlying issue is in all of this????’ I rest my case.
zakes mda
October 10th, 2008 at 11:44 am
…but consider the fate of the interplagitextualiarist who never gets caught because she covers her tracks to well.
“—does it go fast, buddy?
but the man could not hear him over the roar of the motorcycles, which was a lucky thing, for they might of thought he was being impertinent.
what he knew – what she knew, what no one else could ever know about them, these secret thoughts illumined her memory. she longed to remind him of those moments, their moments of brilliance and ecstasy. they were not done of course – there was more to come. but sometimes she felt with him that there where no more words, as if they had used them all up.
she longed to be rid the stifling air of the club, she wanted to be in bed with him beside her. she shouted at him over the cacophonic ocean of noise:
—garett!
he did not hear her at once. she grabbed him by the arm and motioned with her head towards the door.
a victorian horse and carriage, complete with costumed driver and cozy plaid blankets waited invitingly outside the four quarts, but gabby told the driver, sorry, ’cause after all we are living in the 21st century, and together with wendy and burger bob they hoped into a heliotrope colored, neon light festooned “disco-taxi”. gabby took the front seat and for once was glad for loud music for garett had an annoying compulsion for chitchatting with cab drivers.
but the music wasn’t loud enough. soon after leaving the club, garett shouted from his backseat to the driver:
—how tall is that earl boykins, anyway?
—he’s five foot five, the driver shouted back.
—gees, how does he do it?
garett pointed out for gabriella a bus stop shelter billboard: rising from a socle of snow, four deadly-serious, half-naked, afro-american giants surrounded and dwarfed a fawn-eyed boy holding a basketball. gabby waved to the fawn-eyed boy.
—good-night, little earl, she said gaily.
when the cab drew up before the hotel, outdrawing burger bob, she handed the driver a twenty and keep-the-change and he ought to offer earplugs if he couldn’t turn down his sound system.
—that’s a good idea, ma’am.
—you’re welcome to it, said gabby.
garett helped her out of the cab. he held her hand lightly as when they had danced at the reception. she had felt proud and happy then – and loved. this touch of his body, aroused her once again. she pressed his arm closely to her side. they were nearing their freedom, approaching the end of their escape tunnel – from the street she could see the bed light in their room; fleeing from all the burger bobs, and religious fanatics and other hypocrites and people in general without wisdom, courage or taste…so many genuinely unattractive people. as they stood at the hotel door, she rubbed his cheek with her nose.”
October 12th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
thanks harold…uhmmm, hmmm, sho - just a short note on my one encounter with mda - we invited him for a colloquim to talk to our students when i was teaching at mgi, maybe round 2003 or so…and he was the most generous and affable of people…in fact, he turned down his fee and told us to use the money we were going to give him to buy more books for the library…this was not a man out to steal, out to get what he could…this was a warm, generous, expansive human being in love with literature and people…
October 30th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Bootlegging is one of the worst literary offences one can be accused of, it tends to linger over one’s head, one such case involved the revered Antjie Krog. One read about it at every turn. To vindicate one’s name becomes a mammoth task that one has to undertake at all costs.
To this end, I support Mr. Mda’s efforts to clear his name, it would have been proper and only fair for the Mail & Guardian to afford him that opportunity since Mr. Gray’s attack was launched from there.
If I’m not mistaken, the subject matter of the book (The Heart of Redness) in the middle of the furore, is based partly, on one of the amaXhosa’s folklore (involving the prophetess Nongqawuse). I don’t know if anyone at all can lay claim to the story that has been told over and over from one generation to the other by our great story tellers.
But then again, someone might hold a different opinion.