So I'm reading page 123 of "The Fever", and thinking, "Exactly." Between all the X's, Y's, and Z's, there's a bevy of points that seem to illustrate a particular problematic. This also seems to hearken back to an earlier Faith-based point, regarding acceptance speeches...who DO we thank, versus who do we leave out. Who won't WANT us to mention them....etc. etc.
This reminds me also, speaking cross-discipliny, of the song writing business, where everyone claims they've been ripped off by someone else. While this is more about copyright infringement, I think it still holds true for citation/quotation. If Beck uses a sample (today, rather than before the laws got more stringent) he HAS to pay those people for its use. The sampling business tends to take as an unsaid premise, though, the idea that collaboration is inherent and even, .....good?
In the same way, when I, as a hack songwriter, use that guy in my hometown as a character in a song, do I necessarily have to note that "borrowing"? Do our students have to actually write, "This idea came to me the other day as I looked at the paper about the virgin Mary on the tortilla chip, and then I too saw Jesus in my toast, and then wrote this essay about the way that intersection of me, the newspaper, and my god-envisaged breakfast, along with all the prior trips with my parents to church and the people that came up with newspapers, and the guy who first invented the toaster all came together to create my blisteringly good introduction to this close reading assignment in your English 1000 course." To me, this seems overthetop.
Sure, it illustrates the fact that a generally infinite number of things/sources/inspirations come together to form our inventions, but at what point does it become nonsensical BS...like the bit above...? Where do we draw the line when we write our acceptance speeches?
Finally, If the above paper is granted an A? Is that A the writer's or some product of the collective? Does Charles Strite get a line in the Works Cited? These are the questions that try men's soles.
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Isn't the over-the-top-ness suggestive not of the social nature of writing but of the idea that the social is somehow the exception? That "we" are to assume any text is the sole invention of the named writer, with no help, no inspiration, unless the writer chooses to tell us? Isn't that why it's surprising and even shameful to find, after the fact, that a writer got more help than we were told?
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