IP’s basis in the “Enlightenment self” and modern obsession with ownership hides the collaborative nature of language- transition to a “circle of response” foster more production of knowledge under a responsible rhetoric.

For these and no doubt many other reasons, only recently have teachers and theorists of writing begun to excavate the deeply repressed and unspoken formalist, positivist, and individualist ideological assumptions underlying the seemingly simple need for exclusionary ownership of intellectual property. But that work is now underway in composition studies, in work on theory, on history, and on practice. In terms of theories of rhetoric and composition, the work of Susan West comes most immediately to mind. In a commanding dissertation study completed last year ("From Owning to Owning Up: Authorial Rights and Rhetorical Responsibilities"), West explores the construction of

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what she calls the "authordoxy," a term signifying "a cluster of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors linked to modern notions of property, the Enlightenment 'self,' and the Romantic model of composition" (17), in order to critique and reshape three key terms in rhetorical theory: the subject/agent, the message, and the audience. In three fascinating case studies (one on Lani Guinier, one on Anita Hill, one on Anna Deveare Smith), West demonstrates the possibility for a transformed rhetorical theory, one she terms a "rhetoric of responsibility." This alternative rhetoric exists within an ethical framework for rhetorical practice that "respects the right to profit from intellectual labor while resisting the contemporary obsession with 'authorial' rights'' (33) and focuses on Burkean "alchemic opportunities" for acting together in what West calls a "circle of response."

As an aside, let me note that one of my favorite passages in this provocative dissertation is this one: "This page in a dissertation normally is reserved for a copyright notice. I choose instead to acknowledge here the profoundly collaborative nature of all language and thus my indebtedness to the cultural commons whose resources I have borrowed to produce this work. I do so by explicitly placing the text that follows in the public domain. I hope what I have written and now freely share will spur more intellectual labor in the interest of fostering a responsible rhetoric." Though I have read many dissentations, not to mention articles and books challenging the cult of possessiveness that informs our contemporary copyright system, this is the first I have seen that, well, puts it money where its mouth is.

Within historical studies in rhetoric and composition, a great deal of exciting work is underway. In a dissertation in progress ("The Author('s) Proper(ty): Rhetoric, Literature, and Constructions of Authorship"), John Logie looks back to Gorgias, Plato, Quintilian, and Apuleius for an understanding of "rhetoric of possession." His complex analysis of what it means to try to "originate" in these cultures is followed by a leap to the twentieth century where he engages Marxist notions of property and possession, through a (very) close look at Kenneth Burke and Richard Wright; in later chapters he looks at work that seriously challenges conventional constructions of authorship and ownership—Kathy Acker and Art Spiegelman. Logie's aim, as I understand it, is to use his investigations to reshape concepts of authorship and of rights.

A related project is underway in a series of essays by Sarah Sloane, in which she concentrates on the composing processes of the Edinburgh literati in the second half of the eighteenth century. The archival and historiographical work Sloane has done leads her to posit an "ironically exclusive" form of collaborative authorship as characteristic of the time. While it sought to exclude rusticisms and other forms of "bad taste," it also relied on extensive borrowings. As Sloane describes it, "the Edinburgh literari's sharing of insight, trope, idea, and refigurings of classical rhetoric is not plagiarism in the original sense of kidnapping words; instead, it is the production of knowledge

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through an arrangement of sharing supported by common schooling, a familiarity with canonical texts, letters exchanged, and warm conversations about drafts" (npn).

This is precisely the kind of writing Rebecca Howard (1995) has dubbed "patchwriting," in a series of essays and a recent book (Standing in the Shadow of Giants). Indeed, Howard has been insistent in calling on composition teachers and scholars to look at the implications of the theoretical and historical challenges to the romantic notion of a singular, solitary, radically individual and possessive "author." And these practical implications put the spotlight not only on our grading practices and our use of texts and commodities of exchange, but on plagiarism, what we have thought of as "false" ownership. Howard's explorations of "patchwriting,'' which she looks at closely in terms of student writing, is, it turns out, not so different from what advanced scholars in the field think of as good scholarly practice of weaving sources together. I was reminded of this fact forcefully one day last year when a colleague called to say he had been commissioned to write an essay on plagiarism for the New Yorker and had heard I was interested in the subject. I sent him a couple of essays, including one I had written with Susan West and one or two of Howard's. The next time I spoke with him he exclaimed on their usefulness to him, remarking that even as we spoke he was doing a bit of sophisticated patchwriting himself: since the New Yorker abjures footnotes and works cited lists, he was patching into his essay some of the material from Mark Rose's book on eighteenth century copyright. All well and good when a senior scholar is at work; not so well and good when students are carrying out such practices.

As this brief example suggests, discursive practices may not be as easy to label as we once thought, nor have we sufficiently thought through the issues surrounding agency, action, and authoring—and the ways in which these issues frame and shape our ideas of plagiarism. As Lisa and I and scholars like Rebecca Howard and Susan West have tried to point out, contemporary concepts of plagiarism are not only fraught with contradictions but are also fairly new and, in fact, they grow up right alongside the author construct, the intricate system of copyright, and the capitalist economy in which both are deeply implicated. Hence the great need for a collection like this one, which offer a wealth of thinking about the complex and often contradictory definitions surrounding such loaded terms as "plagiarism," "intellectual property," "copyright," "imitation," even "voice." All those interested in the future of composition studies and the teaching of writing will be indebted to the editors and participants who have contributed to this timely and helpful volume.