Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read; they are quotations without inverted commas. The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all humanutterances — is plagiarism.
For substantially all ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a milion outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them, whereas there ts not a rag of onginality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and his temperament, and which ts revealed in characteristics of phrasing. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There ts no thread that is not a twist of these two strands.
By necessity, by prockvity, and by delight, we all quote. Neurological study has lately shown that memory, imagination, and consciousness itself are stitched, quilted, pastiched. If we cut-and-paste ourselves, might we not forgive it of our artworks?
– “ The Ecstasy of Influence, ” Jonathan Lethem, Dot Dot Dot #15, 2008
Will Holder, Monument to cooperation, 2007, brass rubbing ofa monument found in the Seward Park Social Housing Project, New York City, wax crayon on paper, 153.2 x 127.2 cm