Humphrey Minott- Johnson-Eilola and Selber

                I found this article very interesting. Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s concept of assemblage is basically the same thing as remixing. In the article, assemblage is defined as text built primarily and explicitly from existing texts, in order to solve a writing or communication problem in a different or new setting. They are both essentially the same thing; they focus on adding upon something original or previously done to solve a problem or pose a question in a new setting. For example, the website designs they illustrated in the article started with a simple, original one. Then people added and changed it to fit their new setting. We can draw the line between plagiarism and originality at patch writing. It is simply deleting words, substituting words with synonyms, altering grammatical structure, and plugging in new words. I believe that is definitely plagiarism because there is no remixing or assembling of different ideas at all. It is just taking someone else’s work and making a few minor changes. Towards the latter part of the article, it mention gendered metaphors and how people associate originality with masculinity and plagiarism with femininity. I did not quite understand what they meant by saying that. Did they mean they people who plagiarize are weak because they cannot think for themselves, or did they mean something else? Because they go on to say “male oriented metaphors can devalue dialogic collaboration”, which is confusing. Also, initially I was confused by the “Performance to Action or effect” but it became clear to me.