Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker on #SOPA and #PIPAand what it all means. #readingorder #lesebefehl blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/01/17/pip…

— yseult (@yseult) January 18, 2012

I twittered this to start of the day of protests that will finally gather some attention from the general public to the unbelievably inefficient ways of the US to try to come to terms with copyright issues throughout the internet.

Mitchell Baker’s piece says it all and you really don’t have to go any further than that, if you’re not interested beyond that. (If you are however and it’s not the 18th Jan, you may read up on SOPA and PIPA and obviously Wikipedia’s awareness page).

I’ll add a small thought to that in general.

The internet is a frontier free zone.

Certainly, our servers are located in certain countries and thus the same civil and criminal laws apply as with any action. However, the internet in itself in inherently independent from country boundaries, civil inequalities and other historically crafted ways to divide people into groups and favouring your own against another.

Any idea, law or technical mechanism that cannot accept this principle and strives to violate it, needs to suffer the suspicion of threatening liberty of speech, liberty of opinion and liberty of act.

It would suddenly disappear from my Flickr photo feed, then reappear again. It wouldn’t load into my post, but when you’d click on it, you could still see it on Flickr’s page.

Currently my latest Flickr feed plugin shows that the picture is ‘unavailable’ when in the feed it is still viewable.

If this is one of the big clean ups on Flickr as several breastfeeding support groups have seen on Facebook (Petition, and news coverage 2009 and from January 2011), then I am not amused.

I’ve been raised in a post-fervent feminism age, where women’s rights are a comfortable blanket you wrap yourself in and where the reality of the disadvantage of being a woman is always somewhere hidden behind the surface. True female discrimination, the open kind, is something that is barely visible today. (Not unlike the Covert racism my friend and writer Nicki Lisa Cole has written about).
The real problem is twofold: you’ll always be put down by people. Does it really matter what’s the reason? Sex, gender, nation, skin color? The biggest stepping stone for this problem to grow is us getting used to it. As human beings one of our most important evolutionary achievement is the capacity to forget. Forget and move on.
Based on this, is the second part of the ‘twofold’. We women have grown up to feminists and womens right’s acitivists telling us that we can have it all. Have your career, because your grandmother and mother couldn’t have one. Make your decisions for yourself. And once you’re ready, you can have your relationship with the best man in the world, get pregnant and share all your mental and intellectual wealth with your child. Have it all and lose nothing.

It’s been said more than once, and yet, everytime a woman says it people look away as if they’re witnessing a train wreck. (Or a dirty secret, which might not be all that far off from the truth.)
While I specifically will not negate a woman’s God given capacity to handle 100 things at one moment, that undeniable possibility for their brain attention to completely split off into a multitasking frenzy (I am a pro at that), I will argue that something always gets lost. Falls into the cracks of attention and is forgotten.
The same goes of career and family.

And now comes the caveat our mothers only knew too well. Because family in my case is composed of two people. Because a relationship asks for compromise and building something together. And while I am no one to doubt that some women can achieve their dream of a career and a full family life, I would however doubt that they’ve achieved this simultaneously and that they have achieved this with a partner engaged in their own career.

No, today we have this bipolar approach of you can have it all, as long as no man asks you to do it all together. Then women are all up for it and woe to them if in the small hours of the morning they confess to themselves that indeed, they can’t.

Come to think of it, why should we? Why does it seem that for the new generation of women, feminism has in fact raised the pressure to be perfect and have it all, instead of valorising our choices for what they are: a celebration of our liberty to choose.

Starting today and until the August, 7 the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action is celebrating the world breastfeeding week: http://worldbreastfeedingweek.org/

This is an old issue of mine: why are people afraid to have an opinion about something they obviously care about?
The answer is probably simpler than we are led to believe and it has nothing to do with being too absorbed, having to much information on a subject – due to the mass of information in the mass media century – or the fact that they can’t be bothered.

In a time where people with conviction blow up market places and bomb refugee camps and after a century where convictions killed millions of people, it is clear that the image of a person with convictions and a strong belief system – and I don’t mean faith here – has been tainted. Today it equals with ‘being zelous’, ‘being intolerant’ or simply with ‘being suspicious’. But that’s not the only reason.

People have become afraid of expressing their opinions and beliefs because the aggressions or disadvantages that they fear being subjected to could test their system. This, of course, ultimately lead to an underlying agreement that certain discussions or debates are off limits. And since debate – in this mindset – is necessarily conceived as a negative thing, every way a person will try to discuss will be interpreted as a casus belli if the enunciation doesn’t present the four-step attenuation markers, such as subjective tense (also known as I-sentences… “I feel…”, “I think…”), conditional tense, question form and a “…don’t you think?” at the end.

Having an opinion, having conviction and explaining what led to these convictions should be something that can withstand questioning. Even more clearer: it should be something we ourselves question everyday and expose it to further outside questioning, because an opinion that remains unquestioned and un-argued will always just remain an opinion, as opposed to a vision or something that could potentially change the world.

There is a series of sayings that push us to suspect opinions and favour a more active approach to life (and a lot of them are rooted in Judeo-Christian culture): “Make it happen”, “Just do it”, “Actions count more than words”, “Do or don’t, there is no trying…” etc.
Actions however need basis. Physical basis for once. You cannot act on air, and when it comes to change for instance you need an object to change. But what if we took conviction and opinion to be the actual basis of action? What if arguing your opinion and conviction is in itself the first act? Then ‘having an opinion’ and confessing to it publicly could become that much more than just ‘having a philosophy’.

While one side prones their right to the expression of their religious feelings, the opposing masses accentuate the religious-free modern state (when the argument needs to be rationally oriented) or redefine the burka as a symbol of female submission. I favour the last argument, because wearing either the tschador or the burka is Islamic law and not the expression of the islamic religion. The difference might be small for some, but decisive for me. I – as a Catholic – wouldn’t in my right mind as for the Catholic law to be applied in my everyday life or a return to the first inquisitional trial system when the state had no jurisdiction.

But this article is not about the burka per se, and I do not wish to go deeper into this particular discussion.

No. This article is about the Western version of the burka.

The nursing cover.

Never heard of a nursing cover before? Then please take a look is now advertised as one of the latest must haves for the soon-to-be or new mother.

Usually the reasoning goes as this (please note that I am describing the specific case as you’d encounter it in the US. Things are going this same direction in the rest of the world as well, however):

• Version 1. Since people don’t like to see naked boobs, these things are great for covering up.

If then, you have the impossible idea to argue against that, follows…

• Version 2. Since you really don’t want to show your boobs in public, these are still great for covering up.

This is what I would like to call the “naked boob-fallacy” in breastfeeding in public. What it suggests is that in any case, without any choice or other possibility, if you want to breastfeed, you have to expose your breast to the rest of the world around you. And since that is the case, you really should think about covering up. Like this.
I have been breastfeeding for over 6 months now, three months of those I have done it in public at least once a day (in a busy cafeteria at noon, to be quite precise) and I can tell you that I haven’t either flashed anything at anyone that could have been considered indecent by the greatest puritan standards, nor have I ever covered up either with a blanket or a nursing cover.

There are techniques for that, there are tricks to master which make breastfeeding in public as discrete as sitting in a doctor’s waiting room and nursing your 3 month old without any of the attendance even noticing or batting a lash. Sure, it takes time, it certainly takes some practice (which with friend is easily controlled), but the main point is: it is doable. Breastfeeding in public doesn’t mean flashing boobs.

We don’t have to rediscuss the particular problem of the US and their odd legislation in some states that prohibits breastfeeding in public at all or above a certain age, their weird attitude that allows them to not even blink at breasts in any kind of sexualised context, but scream in disgust at the sight of a drinking baby on the breast, but what we need to discuss are the reasons that make nursing covers the last trend. Why ‘covering up’ is necessary. Why a lot of people think, that breastfeeding needs to be done privately.

Because the reasons behind such attitudes, are the same that kept our grandmothers out of the public eye, refused suffrage to women on account of their supidity, advocated bottle feeding because there simply was no way that a woman’s milk could be better than what science had to offer.

Breastfeeding is a very special and very tricky thing at the same time. They key to a successful relationship between baby and mother that will make breastfeeding such an important part in both their lives is trust. Trust in your baby, trust in yourself as a mother, trust that you can find ways to solve problems, trust that you are enough and that you do enough… I could continue the list for a long while here.
Critique, side looks, the atmosphere that you are doing something wrong, the pressure to not feed in public because people might find it gross or indecent or wrong and lastly the automated link that has become so obvious between sex and breasts, make for immense pressure on new mums at a time when so many things are redefined for them. Their self-image, their self-appreciation, their role in life, their role in society, their status etc. etc.

Hiding is a natural reaction to all these changes. Hiding behind a nursing cover promises calm and protection from prying eyes. This is the wrong way to gain more understanding for breastfeeding or new mothers. All it does is draw even more attention to it. With the small addition of an act of concession that breastfeeding needs to be hidden. Needs to be done privately. Needs to be something odd that nobody wants to see.

When in truth it is the largest and most important building stone of the first lovestory your baby will experience. La Leche League says that breastfeeding is as much about communication as it is about feeding. As much about emotion, as it is about sustenence.

Nursing covers on the other hand are all about submission to the standards of a twisted vision, about breaking trust instead of furthering it.

Breastfeeding is something to be proud of and any mother that has breastfeed and seen how many pounds and kilos their kid has put on only with the help of their millk, will confirm this. Breastfeeding and milk production are hard work. It makes you tired, it challenges you, it draws on you even when you think you have nothing more to give and it pushes you to the limits of your love, but at the same time it helps you through the sleepless nights, gives you the confidence you need to let your little one start exploring that great world (because after all, sooner or later, she’ll need to eat… with you!) and it puts you in the middle of every single development of your child. You are the one that will know exactly when baby girl can hold her head, know how much she can flex her muscles, know her tells and her signs of fatigue.

Breastfeeding is that and so much more. WHY would we want to limit that to the private sphere? Hide it under a blanket or a cover? Why not show it outside and to the world?

Take a precious look at the picture that opens the main article of the last issue of ‘Breastfeeding Today’ (5/2011) by LLLI. Look into the eyes of these proud Guatemalteca, these shameless mothers.

That’s what proud breastfeeding looks like. And as mothers, as women, we have a right to feel like that. In public.

Please note that this article by no means is intended to pressure any woman to breastfeed. If you decide not to, the choice is yours, as are your reasons. This is a plaidoyer for visible breastfeeding, not against bottle feeding mothers.

Sometimes we run headlong into these infuriating situations where someones careless incompetence, or neglicence, or pure boredom ends causing more work for us. If you are of the conviction that there is a right attitude to all things and that doing your job right, no matter how small and insignificant it might seem to you, can be a source of pride and satisfaction, then such situations probably tend to annoy you according to their corresponsing level of incompetence, negligence or boredom.

On several occasions I have been witness to an interesting explanation: “Well, face it, love, you’re just way too good (intelligent, genius, efficient etc. etc.) for this job (function, work, us, them, etc. etc.). If only you would accept that, then you could spare yourself a lot of heartache (anger management lessons, chocolate-relieved-frustration induced pounds on your hips).”

The interesting element in this little (freely invented) scene isn’t so much what is being said, but what is not being said, as is often the case in any kind of human interaction. What is said is analysed easily enough: a transfer of fault is executed, away from the person causing the frustration, ot the person being frustrated. It’s a thing we often do (sometimes even without noticing it) in order to deal with emotions that are not our own.
The problem however is, since they are not our emotions, we don’t have to deal with them. Leaving people to their own emotions is something that takes maturity, letting them have their little moment of weakness without feeling compelled to alleviate it by offering a string of solutions that would work for us (that’s what good advice is after all), or trying to reason away their source of frustration or even anger.
Veiling that reasoning into a flattery or into positive words is only meant to pass the bitter pill easier. It’s another form of avoidance. And avoidance of emotions today is what people are so good at. It’s also the reason why there are so many problems of human interaction and social tensions in our western society today. So many resources are geared towards helping people to deal with their own emotions, but rarely are psychologist or therapist working on people’s skills to accept someone else’s emotions that they are faced with.
Here we come to the second element of flattery… not only does it coat and disguise the act of transference of responsibility, but also it’s a pretty good excuse to not take a good look at other people’s (or our own) actions. It’s just another version of the apprentice stating that he can’t possibly do that job, because he’s just not intelligent enough. Or the on from your daughter (after breaking three dishes in as many weeks) that informs you that she can’t set the table anymore, she’ll only break something again.

However, manning/womanning up to your deficiencies, mistakes, our weaknesses and our incapacity to deal with certain people is an integral part of life and accepting them is also part of what usually is called ‘growing up’.

So, just as the stupid person has a right to their stupidity, the intelligent one has a right to be outraged by stupidity being used as an excuse for bullshit.

I realise that I am starting to repeat myself topic wise… but somehow I can’t talk about anything else but change. Not just because my life seems to go through a whole phase of changes one after the other, but because so many people around me seem to be affected by change or by… non-change.

I am faced with a particularly difficult task at the moment. Not only do I need to balance a number of things at various moment, be it work with 100 different dossiers dropping at the same time, personal life, friends, emotions, a pregnancy… but was also asked to start my philosophical engines and contribute in that particular field of Paleoanthropologie/Paleopathology in a meaningful way.

(big silence)

Exactly.

It’s not that I don’t feel inspired by the completely new setting that I am spending my days in now. From mummified mammoth babies, histological cell pictures to ancient DNA extraction protocolls, to orthopedic pathologies in Aegyptian Mumies, I come into contact with a lot of things that are simply breathtaking. (And that is just my working group. Let’s not even start with the space group that is working with NASA on the effects of zero gravity on human cell structure, degradation and other weird stuff that involves sending mice on a parabolic flight in the south of France…)
But for someone who never thought that she had enough stamina, chutzpe or intelligence (according to the time of day) to ever be any good at practical philosophy, this is a true dare.
And indeed, the last couple of weeks have been filled with the bording side of my profession: literature research and delving into a certain number of articles on the ideal way to deal with human remains in research, on the ethics of archeology and exhibit ehtics.

And what can I say? The spark has taken. This terribly theoretical philosopher now is truly inspired to bend her mind to the difficult and necessary task to find ways to think about mummies and historical human remains and their relation to top level modern medical research.

Who would have thought?

I certainly wouldn’t have. And that brings me to the main idea that I needed to share: we never know where we end up. And we’re back to the scary parts of life. The parts that we cannot possibly control. And while we sometimes may think that abandoning one way for another one that seems more comfortable and more secure, that might just be the path that takes us all the way to where we really need to be.

Think about that while you walk home tonight or stand on your balcony, or garden for a moment.

If Human Sciences, are not proper sciences, then where will we stop to devalue human thought and its history? Can you even argue with people who can only accept their own ground of discussion? Why the study of philosophy and thus thought, truly is the only science around.

This week a rather interesting and revealing discussion broke out on my Twitter Feed. The initial kick-off was given by a list of ‘The best 100 scientific Twitterers’ and a revised edition as a twitter list published by @terrorzicke (Name ist Programm – her nick is program).
As member of the Human Sciences, obviously, a friend of mine immediately asked why there were no philosophers (or Scientists in the Liberal Arts for that matter) to be found on her ‘scientific’ list. The crude and simple answer that she reinforced through the subsequent (heated) argumentation was, that Human Sciences are not sciences. (Best laughable tweet out of that discussion: “Geisteswissenschaften kreisen im Gegensatz zu den Naturwissenschaften im Grunde um sich selbst.”  “Human Sciences revolve – to the contrary of natural sciences – only around themselves”)

I won’t go into the depths of that lion pit. It’s pretty much useless to try and reason with people who allow themselves opinions on things they clearly have no idea of. It would be more interesting to try and reason with a cup of coffee. At least, if there is no response, you get a decent shot of caffeine out of it.
I’ll only put one thought out there and it’s one that becomes quite clear if you’ve ever interested yourself for neurological sciences.
There are a lot of ‘natural’ things out there that we can study and analyse in many different ways. The purely materialistic, descriptive way, being one of them – the purely scientific way in the above cited way of thinking. The analysis of the language in which this is made however would already be a ‘human scientist’ way of looking at things.
Without the ordering and the reflection of philosophy which goes beyond the raw material, all we would have is nothing more than a huge stack of information such as the colour red solicits a neuron fire with such and such intensity taking into account the context and situation. But how it is that we can reference that red, or what it means for a thing to be red (even though scientifically speaking the colour red doesn’t exist) which will then lead us to the problem of accidental properties as opposed to essential ones, the theory of individuation and personal identity and so forth… all these questions are philosophical ones and per the cited definition ‘not scientific’.

It is a common misconception that within the confines of Human Sciences anything goes. People from the outside think that we continuously weave our insignificant web of thoughts around a comfortable glass of wine and a good laugh within our own idiosyncratic language, pleasuring ourselves in our own brain juice.
‘Scientificity’ realises itself within the confines of a method. If the method is faulty, no physicist can work. Neither can a philosopher or a linguist or a literate. Far away is the concept that ‘anything goes’. You might gain great popularity among a certain crowd by being without a method (Derrida for instance), but the fame is temporary. (Not one of Derrida’s direct students is still working with his thought. Parts of his method of deconstruction – which isn’t a method truly – but not the complete version and for the next generation of students Derrida will be a relic, not a school anymore.)

As someone who edits texts that have never before seen a printed edition, texts that remain unheard and inaccessible for the scientific community of Medievalists, I work with quantifiable method and scientific means such as distribution, probability, semantic quantities etc. to near myself as closely as ever possible to the original text which is most cases is lost. If you imagine that for the more popular texts you have between 30 and 50 surviving manuscripts and thus potentially 30 to 50 different versions of a text, it becomes immediately apparent why the claim that this can’t by any means be considered science is laughable. Not only do I have to go through that very materialistic part of my work, but after years of that exploring the material support of the text in question (it’s just the characters and the vellum really), I then proceed to the interpretation of the text itself, trying to explain what it’s all about. And only in a third last step do I examine that theory against the ‘bigger picture’ (does it make sense in itself? does it apply to opponents at the time it was written? what do we learn from it in terms of overall realisation? etc.)
In my particular case, as Historians of Philosophy, we are the badly loved kid of all the departments. For the historians, we’re not really historians; for the philosophers, we’re not really philosophers and for the editors, we know way to much to gain quick money with us. Truth of the matter is: we are everything and nothing. We need to have all the instruments a historian needs, all the knowledge and methods a philosopher does and we need to have a decent technical approach to texts and their transmission through the ages. We do it all, and yet, nobody takes us seriously.
So, it’s been long that I have taken anybody for full who claims that this is not science.

In some definitions ‘science’ is defined by the fact that you open up new grounds or that you create the basis for thought and study. It’s clear that with my work, I do just that. Without text editions, our look on a certain period will always remain limited, because the huge cellars of the major libraries of Europe are filled will texts that have never been read by a larger public after the 16th century.

Interestingly enough of course, none of those arguments which my friend made in said Twitter debate were accepted. Neither were mine. To the question why the person was ignoring me in particular, it was said that ‘who protects their tweets doesn’t want to be heart’.

Now, that brings me to another small truth, this time about our modern means of communication. Today, we’re always supposed to be online, always supposed to be linked to that behemoth internet, and if we don’t reply immediately to an email or a text, something is clearly wrong. And yes, if you are stupid enough to protect your privacy because you want to know who is following you, you do not want to be heard.
Yes, I protect my updates, I also protect my Facebook profile, but because the majority of users have lost all sense of the truth that on the opposite side of them sits a real person in front of that PC screen.

The fact that Terrorzicke didn’t want to see what I had to say to her (it would have been easy enough for her to ask for authorisation, it takes one click after all), just shows what happens to people when they don’t want to be reasoned with: they become a caricature of themselves.

Protecting myself from complete exposure over the internet doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be heard, it rather tells you that when I accept you, I have properly seen you and want to enter into contact without. You’re not just another one of the mass that I don’t care about. And it will tell you that I don’t like to be spammed and have a pretty solid knowledge of spammers, useless twittbots and the like.

It becomes very apparent, that people who cannot even reconstruct an act of volition without error, cannot be asked to qualify what is scientific and what is not. And that is why this whole discussion is pointless. Who doesn’t want to hear, will never hear, not matter how loud we shout it.
Human thought will always be an exhilarating subject of study, while the measures of ‘scientificity’ will always be subject to the last and current fashion of the times in which they are uttered.

In times of the internet and the quick use of any copy/paste function, where the transmission of thoughts and discussions is so immediate, does the term of Plagiarism even still make sense?

This week two topics concerning cheating in writing (also known as: Plagiarism) have hit the major media. They are – at first sight – diametrically opposed, but reveal a lot about how we see the art of creation, the writing business and how web 2.0 and modern means of communication are shaping our intellectual food and why it is that we are starving.

The first case involved star philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, a French self-made thinker (in every sense of the term applicable)¹ who has construed his career on said media exposition for the last decades. His latest book ‘On War in philosophy’ – which with the according exposure and the current need for answers on this topic – has been longingly awaited by the chic well-meaning, slightly world removed circles of professional brow frowners of the current Zeitgeist circles ². It is only a small ironical value of that BHL (his official trademark) has now been beaten down by the same feuilltons that usually hail him and applaud every undertaking that the great mind publicises ³. Yes, the man has been proven to be unable to do proper research. He can be seen citing a fictitious writer and his slightly less fictitious texts in his latest work. Less fictitious? The author in question is an invention by a French satritical writer Frédèric Pagès from a renowned satire paper called Le Canard Enchaîné (The Chained Duck) and was meant to wear the armour of champion of the 20th century Anti-Katian movement. The character of Jean-Baptiste Botul had so much success upon his invention that the journalist then went on to publish the invented oeuvre.
Apart from BHL missing the very basic sense and curiosity – which should and can be expected from a ’professional thinker’ – to solidify his own thought based on his sources (it would have taken him a simple Google search to unverify this quoted author), the interesting point here, is not the King’s dethronement. At least not for me. It’s as usual the scene around the throne that interests me more.

The moment in the book where this fictitious source ⁴ was used (or so they tell me, because I confess to not having it read yet), is a critical one: it quotes back to a conference the dear BHL had given last year at the Ecole Normale Supérieure ⁵, using it as what science calls an argument of authority for his own thought and he is quoting a real text written by a satirical journalist (who per se has nothing to say on the matter of wars, thought or metaphysics) who himself has invented a well thought out author with a fitting biography. Now Frédèric Pagès didn’t have in mind to gully people into thinking this was true thought by an actual thinker when he published the works of conferences by Jean-Baptiste Botul. However, BHL’s quoting – even if it’s a funny story – validates the thoughts within these conferences supposedly given in Brazil after the end of WWII.

The point to be made here is the following: No matter how a thought, a critique or a stance came into the world, through satire, through joke, it’s validity isn’t given by it’s author alone, their standing or by the measure that modern booklists give them, but by their applicability to the world. Clearly, something must have sounded right in BHL’s ears to have quoted it that way.

The second event has been breaking across the internet and the major media in Germany. About three weeks ago a certain Helene Hegemann (18) has published her first novel: Axolotl Roadkill. The feuilltons and critics hailed the book as the best portrayal of the current young generation, the generation of the zero years (ie. 2000 to 2009), a new ‘Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo’ for a new generation, even though it’s content merely shows – using a crude and current language which involves barely anything above the belt line – the general loss of orientation of kids today. Helene Hegemann is no Christiane F., she lacks the genuine problems that allowed other artists to be inspired by her fate. (cf. for instance Cristiane F., the album by David Bowie or the movie). In all truth, all these two girls have in common is that they both showed us their state of mind. Where the one from the 70ies was in no area of her life adapting or working things out and spiralling deeper and deeper into drug addiction and the follow up tragedies, the other one at the start of a new decade of a new millennium shows how much she really has adapted herself to the world and how it works.  Not a single so-called intellectual writer has dared to ask the proper questions, the only newspaper that didn’t review the book was the Zürich based Tagesanzeiger, they found the book apparently too bland and polished ⁶.

It took a simple blogger. A citizen journalist to find out that Hegemann had copied most parts of her first novel off the internet and a particular blog. A fact that the editor immediately declared a detail which the author however failed to mention anywhere. The journalists that had cherished her before… did not drop her. They were ready for the 360 for her new found prodigy, suggesting in all earnestly (the editor and author later confirmed that idea) that copying and using like that was part of the new generation’s ways of communicating, of appreciating the world and that it was completely acceptable for youngsters today. And that’s where the big division is taking place. Nobody seems to want to believe the feuilltonists at this point, because the internet is exploding with people crying outrage ⁷.

Why is that? Because plagiarism is a crime? Because we have a right to what we create? Because… they should know better?

For me personally plagiarism is the worst possible kind of intellectual cannibalism (there are nuances in my head, yes) and just as with real cannibalism, some people might find it acceptable, others might not even consider the idea, for people that live from what they write and accomplish with words, the ethical dimensions are similar to real cannibalism. In a time where students at university think that research means ‘looking it up on google’ and where plagiarism is becoming the standard (in the Philosophy Dept. with three profs alone here in Geneva, there are at least 3 cases per semester), who honestly can be shocked about a girl copying her novel?

It’s the main paradigm of post-modernism that nothing in the world can be reinvented, that everything has been said and thought and that we are all just quoting, thus rendering true art as an act of creation obsolete. This has been the first step to devalue and invalidate the creative act and it is the first paving stone of the road we are on now.

The main question to ask is obviously how the critics can hold on to their prodigal kid by claiming that copying is actually ‘ok’ as long as it’s a ‘thing that kids just do’?

The answer is pretty simple: because plagiarism only makes sense in a written world. Where the written (and printed) word has meaning and a certain authoritative value.
The internet has a colloquial sense to it, and kids today are much more geared towards conversation and immediateness. It’s no wonder they are so in-to-the-net. It satisfies the basic need of every kid or teenager or tween: I want it now and I want it all ⁸. Add to that that an author in the internet or of a blog is a very abstract entity. The fact that bits and bytes represent the text don’t help. A text in printing ink just is so much more imposing and… real.

Two cases, two countries that seemingly have nothing to do with one another. In my view they do. Whereas in BHL’s case, the scientific research, everything is given to the authority of the text, in Hegemann’s case, a novel, nothing is given to the source and there is no argument of authority other than the one of the critics who elevated her. In both cases the reader is left under-nourrished and disappointed.

We buy books and pay authors for various reasons. But no matter what the context is, be it scientific, intellectual or fiction, we pay them for their creativity. We pay them because they spent time on something that we haven’t thought of or don’t have the time to, they created something. They thought and had a will to do something with it.
The discussion about plagiarism, what it is and what it isn’t, what it should be and what it can’t be is an ongoing one. The latest book on the subject has only just come out ⁹. As readers, we live from the illusion that we are reading something new. Whether it’s true or not, is secondary. When German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer ¹⁰ stated that when we read a text, we throw ourselves (as the complete being with our social realisation etc.) in front of the progression of the text, that we assume and accept the text as an authority that has to tell us something, he revealed the non-dictum that others fail to see today. Texts are universes. They are very talkative universes. They manipulate, they play with Gadamer’s basic assumption, they shock and they hurt ¹¹. And we all take it. We take it because we believe that the authors have done their work. They have created something. For us.

It’s when we realise that they have cheated and lied that the whole building collapses on itself. Not only does writing become insignificant – limited to the simple machinality of a couple of keystrokes between ctrl+c and ctrl+v -, but ultimately reading is nothing more than listening to the constant jabber of everyday life when it should be elevating us, should inspire us and should make us dream or think.

ADDENDUM: Meanwhile, the Book Expo of Leipzig as nominated Axolotl Roadkill for their 2010 book prize (45.000 Euro). Looking at the standing now, it might not win, but who knows. To not completely throw out their chances, the editor has now issued a nervous telegram stating that in the fourth edition of the book, a ‘list of sources’ would be included. I’ve been fortunate enough to take a look at it and it’s seven pages long and presents itself as an evident alibi. The last paragraph of said list states: “Dieser Roman folgt in Passagen dem ästhetischen Prinzip der Intertextualität und kann daher weitere Zitate enthalten.” which translates to this: This novel follows in certain passages the aestetical principle of intertexuality and may thus contain more quotations (than listed here).
Intertextuality, dear friends, is a scientific concept that became popular in the late 60ies and early 70ies (under Kristeva and the rising movement of psychoanalytical thought in literature and critique of structuralism ie. poststructuralism. It’s not an aestetic principle, it’s a variation of what I referred to as the postmodern principle (“nothing can be said without quoting anything”). Intertextuality uses any given text as a marking point. It doesn’t necessarily quote it, it doesn’t necessarily plagiarise it and it certainly doesn’t use it in a cannibalistic sense. Shame on the editor who obviously were looking for a new child prodigy and through people weren’t intelligent enough to notice their foul play and now try to hide behind scientific concepts that they have no idea of. The King is truly naked.