Question: When does remixing become second-hand living?

Germany has been rocked by scandal this past week, as Helene
Hegemann, the 17-year old writer of an astonishing novel called
Axolotl Roadkill, has been shown up by Munich blogger Deef
Pirmasens (Gefühlskonserve) to have lifted whole passages of her
book from the writings of one Airen, a blogger in Berlin. Her
publisher had asked her whether she’d quoted anything, and she’d
said “no”. So she made a stupid mistake, and she’s being called a
liar and a thief and all sorts of other nice things. The book is
hot, sold out, second printing in the works. I only read the
first 20 pages at my sister-in-law’s. It’s fast and savvy, a head
trip full of adult experiences you’d sleep better knowing a 16 or
17 year old hasn’t had yet. So you really can’t help but be
relieved that she actually did copy some of the episodes from an
urbane blogger. Anyhow, she’s saying that her whole book is a
remix anyway, and a totally legitimate new literary art form at
that. Of course she’s right about remixing being a movement and
an art form, and she can talk the talk, so she’ll be in the
literary supplements for a while to come. Once the copyright
issue  is settled in the second edition, a minor issue, and
she shares the limelight with Airen, she’ll survive just fine as
a writer.


But let’s just go back one step. So her book is pieced together
almost completely from second-hand experiences. In music,
remixing can create something sophisticated that reflects the
artist’s skill and vision. But words are by their very nature
unoriginal. Putting them together in a way that makes them your
own is a helluva job. Remixing writing to make a novel? Why write
one at all if you’re producing a product that just reproduces
what other people have written? What’s the point?


This also makes me think of my own work as a teacher. In essay
writing I preach: Put yourself into your writing. Make it real.
Live, and live to talk about it. That’s especially hard to do in
“English as a foreign language”, which is basically a large
collection of the handiest, most frequently used phrases, so it’s
full of linguistic clichés. It can drive a language lover to
drink. So it’s hard enough to help language learners find their
own voice. Do they plagiarize? All the time. And I give them hell
for it.


Here’s what I think: Plagiarizing is not the same thing as
remixing. Plagiarizing isn’t “borrowing” from others.  All
it is, is stealing from yourself.


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The post Question: When does remixing become second-hand living?
first appeared on Anne Hodgson.