Using the Rhetoric of Plagairism and Forgery to Help Students find Value in their own Writing

Robillard, Amy and Ron Fortune.  “Toward a New Content for Writing Courses: Literary Forgery, Plagiarism, and the Production of Belief.”  Journal of Composition Theory.  27.1/2 (2007) pp. 185-210.

In their article “Toward a New Content for Writing Courses: Literary Forgery, Plagiarism, and the Production of Belief”, Amy Robillard and Ron Fortune discuss plagiarism and forgery as a legitimate form of writing in order to raise awareness of the motives a student may have to plagiarize, and even (to an extent) how the student may benefit from plagiarizing.  Robillard’s article culminates in discussions of  different types of cultural theory which she hopes may help students recognize the worth of their own work.

In their article Robillard and Fortune discusses Ritter’s article “The Economics of Authorship”, describing how students may place so little value on authorship that they may feel that purchasing a paper from a paper mill is an acceptable way to succeed in a writing class (203).  Despite dishonest motives, Robillard and Fortune see plagiarism in this case as still being beneficial to the student in a writing process classroom; such a student would still be learning something as they work backward through the writing process to process to recreate other aspects, such as notes, a rough draft, and so on (205).  To them this is comparable to forgery, specifically that by Ireland who, a man who produced works and correspondence by ‘Shakespeare’, as well as a paper trail legitimizing his works in the 18^th century (198).  Ultimately, Robillard and Fortune claim that the best way to help students understand the worth of their writing is by encouraging them to think of their paper’s worth in terms of cultural capital (188), and by contrasting “labor theory of value” (a product has value in relation to how much effort is put into it) vs “exchange theory of value” (a product has as much value as others choose to give it) (206).

While Robillard and Fortune’s article doesn’t give any concrete pedagogical ideas in terms of teaching these concepts to students, I can imagine an exercise which might illustrate these concepts.  I could draw a picture on the board, and then hand out a picture I have photocopied of, say, the Mona Lisa.  Then, I could have the students brainstorm what sort of values each picture gives to me, the creator.  After thinking about this for a while, I can explain to them that the picture I drew gives me more cultural power; producing something mediocre and original (such as their own papers) gives them more cultural power than copying something exceptional because in this way they are creating academic power for themselves by learning how to write well enough to be recognized as a member of their discipline’s community.