I can’t resist pointing to the student plagiarism story over at ZaPaper’s Chicago Beijing. While ZaPaper focusses the entry on a teacher’s intervention gone awry, the true beauty of this case lies in the topic and argument of the plagiarised piece:
And get this, the paper was on copyright and intellectual property (specifically with respect to music sampling, U2 and Negativeland). And GET THIS: Cheater is arguing in her paper that U2 was right, Negativeland was wrong, and sampling music is cheating.
Kewpie Doll: Never do this again. Some teachers would throw you right out of the course for this.
Cheater: I know, I know. All I was thinking was “length, length, length.”
Maybe that’s what Negativeland was thinking too. Points off for hypocrisy.
Or maybe it wasn’t really plagiarism, but a sophisticated self-referential critique that chose to make its point by using stylistic strategies that directly contradict the expressed content and overt argument. (I’ve been writing way too much on Marx lately…)
Rough Theory 