Abstract
For including the passages quoted above, without acknowledgement, in their most recent novels, both Houellebecq and Hegemann faced accusations of plagiarism. In both cases, their creative practices were identified and brought to the public attention by bloggers in France and Germany, respectively; Houellebecq’s sources were revealed by Vincent Glad and discussed online on Slate.fr on September 2, 2010,5 and Hagemann’s by Deef Pirmasen in a blog post from February 5, 2010, on Die Gefühlskonserve: As Seen in Real Life blog.6 There are further similarities: both authors refuted the indictments by claiming their plagiaries were not plagiaries at all but expressions of authentic, creative endeavors, reflecting current developments in the literary scene and beyond. Both received high critical acclaim for their writing; Hegemann as a finalist in the competition for the $20,000 Leipzig Book Fair prize for fiction and Houellebecq as a winner of 2010 Goncourt Prize. The general approach to the two publishing controversies raises questions about the notions of creativity and originality while also challenging accepted limits of literary influence, adaptation, and appropriation. Taking the debate surrounding the two literary cases as a starting point, this chapter looks at ways new technologies affect current approaches to concepts of originality, authorship, and creativity.
Keywords
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Each female of Musca domestica can lay up to five hundred eggs, and occasionally a thousand. These eggs are white and measure around 1.2 millimetres long.1
Michel Houellebecq, The Map and the Territory (2010)
Each female can lay up to 500 or even 1,000 eggs, on five occasions with around 100 eggs laid each time. These eggs are white and measure about 1.2 millimetres long.2
Wikipedia.fr
A rococo building, closer to the Turkish part of Schöneberg than the gay part and only a hundred yards away from one of the two branches of Lidl with the best opening hours in the city […] corridor with black wood and mirrors.3
Helene Hegemann, Axolotl Roadkill (2010)
A rococo building, inside dark wood and mirrors, located closer to the Turkish part of Schöenberg than the gay part […] one of the two Lidl stores with best opening hours in Berlin.4
airen.wordpress.com
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Notes
Michel Houellebecq, The Map and the Territory, trans. Gavin Bowd (London: William Heinemann, 2011), 182.
Helene Hegemann, Axolotl Roadkill, trans. Katy Derbishire (London: Corsair, 2012), 195.
Deborah Halbert, “Poaching and Plagiarising: Property, Plagiarisms and Feminist Futures,” in Perspectives on Plagiarism and Intellectual Property in a Postmodern World, ed. Lise Buranen and Alice M. Roy (New York: State University of the New York Press, 1999), 111.
I borrow this statement from Marilyn Randall, Pragmatic Plagiarism: Authorship, Profit, Power (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), vii.
Michel, Houellebecq, Interview by Joseph Vebret, Vous avez dit plagiat?, trans. my own, Le Nouvel Observateur September 6, 2010. http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/romans/20100906.BIB5594/exclusif-la-reponse-de -michel-houellebecq-aux-accusations-de-plagiat.html (accessed January 25, 2011).
Lynne A. Greenberg, “The Art of Appropriation: Puppies, Piracy, and Post-modernism,” Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal 11, no. 1 (1992): 27.
Robert Fitterman and Vanessa Place, Notes on Conceptualism (New York: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009), 32.
Kenneth Goldsmith, “Why Conceptual Writing? Why Now?,” Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing, ed. Craig Dworkin and Kenneth Goldsmith (Evanson, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011), Xix.
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 1.
Marie-Laure Rya, “Cyberspace, Virtuality, and the Text,” in Cybertext Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory, ed. Marie-Laure Ryan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 89.
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© 2014 Russell Cobb
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Marczewska, K. (2014). “There Is No Such Thing as Originality Anyway …”: Authorship in the Age of Digital Reproduction. In: Cobb, R. (eds) The Paradox of Authenticity in a Globalized World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137353832_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137353832_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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