Sirc continues with the idea that "text as box = author as collector" (117).
This speaks to me as this is how I gain much of the content of my own works. I am forever collecting snippets, words and phases from whatever happens in the world around me. It may be from others speaking, the radio, other texts, observations of events, images of scenery and landscapes; I am not sure where it all comes from, but it all goes in my little journal as pastings, cuttings and recordings which I then use in various fashions.
I guess that makes me plagiarist, doesn't it? Nothing I have is truly my own, but re-sequenced, newly-nuanced, or even newly paired concepts. I think that it is folly to say that what we choose to compose is purely imagined and created solely from our minds. In truth, all we choose to say, write, draw, display is influenced by our experience, isn't it?
I like the build-up here, Kent. Plagiarist, however, rings of ethical misconduct: in collecting, the collector recklessly disregards where stuff comes from, even going so far as to claims it was always one's own. A collector can forge a very different ethos simply by acknowledging how the collection comes from somewhere else, right? That said, I think there is some insight to be gained in a more positive framing of plagiarist as relates to the inevitability of borrowing (acquisition) true of language use (and all forms of social development really).
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