Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s concept
of assemblage similarly relates to “Remix” by challenging our definition of
plagiarism and explaining that everything today is a sort of byproduct of past
ideas. In the essay, the authors take two terms: originality and plagiarism,
and uncover a “happy medium”: assemblage. They encourage teachers to see
assemblage as an actual valid form of writing rather than as plagiarism. The
authors define assemblage as texts constructed from existing works to solve a
problem in a novel text (very similar to the definition of a remix which also
combines existing ideas to create a new product). The definitions of
originality and plagiarism continue to evolve and change as time goes on.
Plagiarism tends to deal primarily with the legal aspects associated with one’s
“original” work. Teacher’s main concern
with plagiarism is the ethical aspect of it all. They don’t want students
straight up stealing work from others without putting any effort themselves
into it. Originality, however, can be defined as combining past ideas to create
a novel idea, as long as, they indeed create a new product. If the idea has
already been invented and is simply just stolen work then it is to be
considered plagiarism. I agree with the authors’ viewpoint on assemblage. I
believe assemblage is not plagiarism and it is much more complex then just
combining ideas. Assemblage requires creativity and original thought even
though it is using past works and ideas. I personally believe that as long as a
student isn’t “word for word” stealing another author’s text, and is including
their own beliefs and opinions it is “original” as well. I believe that the
article itself was pretty straight forward, although it is a very subjective
topic, I think the authors did a great job getting their point across.
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