kagablog

After Stephen Gray savaged me in the pages of the Mail & Guardian a few weeks ago, I immediately responded, thanks to the new age of blogs where no one can now act as the gatekeeper of ideas.

I would like to share my response with the readers of the M&G in this expanded and revamped version of what appeared in the blogosphere.

It is interesting that Gray bases his jibes and snide remarks on an article in Research in African Literatures by one Offenberger, which has been totally discredited by such literary scholars as Byron Caminero-Santangelo (author of an excellent book titled African Fiction and Joseph Conrad: Reading Postcolonial Intertextuality, published by the State University of New York Press in 2005), who calls Offenberger’s article “critical absurdity”.

Caminero-Santangelo points to its lack of analysis of the fictional material and its relationship with the historical intertext, and also its lack of theoretical reflection. That is why not a single newspaper here in the United States has picked up that story — everyone regards it as a nonsensical issue.

And that is why the academy here has not bothered with this matter, despite the fact that the academy in the United States regards plagiarism as a serious offence and people lose jobs because of it.

But here I am, still working as a scholar who is highly respected by his peers. The reason is simply that my peers know enough about intertextuality to conclude that the charges of plagiarism are baseless. They find this whole debate silly, and they are wondering why I am wasting my time responding to it. I don’t normally respond to critics, I tell them, and I would not be responding to Gray if it were not for the tone of his scurrilous charges, not so much against my work, but against me as a person.

The Heart of Redness was first published in 2000. If Gray is such a great scholar, one wonders why he didn’t discover this “cribbing” — as he so cutely calls it — all these years. Why is he now riding on the tailcoats of this so-called historian — who is in fact a student at Yale University and will only be regarded as a historian by his peers when he has published work of substance.

I see strong signs of dishonesty on Gray’s part because soon after this novel was published, the same Gray himself hailed it as a work of international standard and a “peak moment” in local publishing when it was shortlisted for the Sanlam Literary Prize. Where were the split infinitives and bad tense then? Come on, Gray!

keep reading this article in today’s mail&guardian