Once upon a time, a visiting scholar presented a lecture on the topic: ‘How many philosophical positions are there in principle?’ ‘In principle,’ he began, ‘there are exactly 12 philosophical positions.’ A voice called from the audience: ‘Thirteen.’ ‘There are,’ the lecturer repeated, ‘exactly 12 possible philosophical positions; not one less and not one more.’ ‘Thirteen,’ the voice from the audience called again. ‘Very well, then,’ said the lecturer, now perceptibly irked, ‘I shall proceed to enumerate the 12 possible philosophical positions. The first is sometimes called “naive realism”. It is the view according to which things are, by and large, very much the way that they seem to be.’ ‘Oh,’ said the voice from the audience. ‘Fourteen!’

THE MISSION BEHIND THIS PAPER:

IS TO STOP UNIVERSITY MANAGEMENT FROM RUNNING THIS INSTITUTION AS A BUSINESS

TO CREATE A BETTER PEOPLES FRIEND CAMPUS

IS TO IMPLEMENT BETTER WAYS OF COMMUNICATION THAT WILL ENABLE STUDENTS TO UNLEASH THEIR ANGERS AND UNSATISFACTORINESS TO THE MANAGEMENT ON A DAILY BASIS

TO INTRODUCE AN EMAILING SYSTEM FOR LOST AND FOUND STUDENT CARDS AND OTHER PERSONAL BELONGINGS

TO INTRODUCE SUPPLEMENTS AND WINTER/SUMMER TERM(S)

IT IS NOT VISIONARY OR IDEALISTIC INDEPENDENT MINDED FOR AN INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE

I’ll report back after the election results are in, but I’d be willing to put money on him winning a seat on the council…

Recently, though, I’ve been given an opportunity to be part of a research team that should propel me quite swiftly up the publication ladder. And this development has finally given me something to say on research funding applications, which is a welcome development given the prices of academic texts. In fact, I’m apparently fitting into a common stereotype – my colleague says “humanities types encounter sticker shock when they see what science & economics texts cost”.

So the one funding avenue available is the thing that this University calles the “Emerging Researcher Programme”, which is intended (at least partly) for slackers like me, who are believed to have unfulfilled potential. By joining, you get (a maximum of) 5 years of advice and support, plus the opportunity to apply for a share of bounty specifically reserved for members of the programme.

When I received the personal invitation to join – a process which begins with an interview with a “leading academic” and mentor in the programme – I was surprised and dismayed to see that this academic’s email contained a flagrant overuse of italicised and bold type, seemingly arbitrary underlining for emphasis, as well as two sentences ending in multiple exclamation marks. And here’s the thing: so much as I want the money to be able to buy all these overpriced texts, I’m not really sure that I can deal with emails, seminars, and generally, guidance from people who write like that.

Of course, some may say that I’m pre-empting my not joining the programme, and thereby providing convenient justification for continued lack of progress in terms of publication and the like. This may well be true, or part of the truth. But I’d want a programme such as this, if taken seriously by the University, to at least have a filtering mechanism in place whereby correspondence inviting people to become part of the research community satisfies the same standards expected of the research itself.

Or maybe the email does satisfy those standards, which is perhaps the most disturbing thing of all.

I’m referencing the article as it appeared in New Contrast, and highlighting only those sections that contain allegations of plagiarism. As anyone who has read the piece knows, it also has plenty to say regarding what a crap poet Krog is (6 of 14 pages, in fact), but that’s not relevant here. I’m not claiming this to be an exhaustive analysis, but I don’t think I’ve left out any key charges against Krog – let me know if I have.
1. The books of both writers contain verse adaptations of “some three-dozen” extracts from the Bleek and Lloyd collection, as well as introductions explaining cultural references. Roughly a third of Watson’s selection appears in Krog’s book. (Pages 48 and 49)
The most apppropriate response to this is surely “so what?”. Even though (according to Watson) there are 13 000 pages of narratives from which to select, it’s plausibly the case that only some of it would be attractive to both Watson and Krog. That subset consists of only a third of Watson’s selection – Krog seems to have, in the main, used different material to Watson.

2. Nowhere in Krog’s book does she acknowledge that “she has lifted the entire conception of her book” from Watson (page 49).

As many authors have pointed out (see the links in post titled “Plagiarism”), there is a tradition of drawing on the Bleek and Lloyd collections in South African letters. Nowhere in Watson’s book does he acknowledge his predecessors in this sort of enterprise, and it’s only by absolving himself of possible guilt in this regard that his accusations against Krog can become viable. Secondly, while she credits the original authors, Watson never does, which seems to be a striking departure from Watson’s “conception”…

3. Krog allegedly repeats errors made by Watson, thus proving that she lifted these errors directly from his text (page 49).

Eve Gray:  “The ‘five-thousand year culture and way of life’ is a commonplace, going back to Theal in the early part of the century; In referring to this five-thousand year way of life, Krog’s wording is quite different to Watson’s.”

4. “to find endings for pieces which either did not end or ended in a way…” (Watson) vs. “narratives have no usable beginning or end…” (Krog).

(The quotes above are incomplete). The evidence Watson presents here seems little more than desperate. The sentiments expressed by these two quotes are commonplace, and I must have come across them dozens of times in interviews and biographies of writers. The possibility that Watson believes his forumations to be priveleged does not make it so.

- 6 pages of ad hominem attacks on Krog follow -

- 2 pages of more general reflections on intellectual property follow -

5. Then, the real issue, at least as far as I’m concerned: the similarities between a Ted Hughes essay and Krog’s “Country of my skull” (pages 59-60).

These are strikingly similar, even though Watson has presented the similarity dishonestly (as Eve Gray points out, the Hughes’ extract is spread over 2-3 pages in the original). Krog claims she has never read the Hughes piece. Yet what she writes is, I feel, very reliant on the Hughes essay. It may be true that Krog has never read it, but I am skeptical. It’s possible, for example, that Krog heard or read someone else quoting Hughes, and certain phrases stuck in her mind. Normally I’d not want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but Watson has been so uncharitable in the rest of his essay that I’m tempted to believe Krog. But that would not be fair to the evidence, which does suggest that Krog plagiarised from Hughes.

But we should not make the error of allowing the Hughes issue to distract from the worth of Watson’s central claims. An essay dealing with Krog’s plagiarism of Hughes may generate a very different set of responses, given that it could be written with a backbone of solid evidence rather than character assassination and similarities that begin and end with the commonplace, or borrowings that Watson is as guilty of as Krog.

Watson closes his essay by saying that Krog’s latest book is a “blatant act of appropriation and a no less obvious case of personal opportunism. It dishonours a legacy, that of the Bushman cultures, which should be honoured above all”. To conclude this post, I’d argue that this quote reveals a degree of irrationality on Watson’s part. If one wants to make accusations as strong as Watson’s, one should make sure that your revolver is pointed away from your feet, and that your petard is safely packed away in a cupboard, etc.

The “appropriation” involved in Watson’s book (not mentioning the previous Bleek and Lloyd adaptations/translations, which may well have given him the idea for his book) seems worthy of the same attention as he directs at Krog. The “opportunism” of Watson’s (poorly substantiated, except insofar as Hughes is concerned) attack on Krog is at least as notable as any opportunism on Krog’s part. Finally, given that Watson never highlights the names of the Bushman poets as prominently as Krog does, the dishonouring of their legacy appears to be a concern he doesn’t take quite as seriously as he would like us to believe.

I no longer believe there to be any merit to Watson’s charges, and am now far more interested in the question of why he felt it necessary to be so hostile and disingenuous in his treatment of what appears to be a non-issue. Could it be as simple a thing as jealousy, given his relative obscurity of late?

1. The Dean of my Faculty has been asked to step down to make way for an affirmative action appointment. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not opposed to wanting to fill senior posts in this way, so long as merit is still the primary constraint on appointments. But this University struggles to find lecturers in AA demographic groups because the private sector pays qualified candidates double (or more) the salary we can, and one would suspect that this gap would only increase when talking about someone eligible (and willing) to be Dean. So you have to worry about the search being futile, and then about someone far less suitable than the current Dean (who wants to stay) being appointed.

2. I’ve been here for around 15 years. In all that time, a constant noise has been that the Faculty Handbooks are an element of our legal contract with the students – they spell out what the students are meant to do to be eligible to write their exams in each course, for example. But as of this year, these handbooks are only going to be distributed to 1st-year students, with senior students having access only through the University website.

Now, I’m no lawyer, but I would imagine that if something is to count as a legal contract with a student, you have to do all you can to make sure they have access to the terms of that contract, and have read these terms? And surely your registration forms for senior students should include a mention that handbooks will no longer be available in printed form, and ask you to affirm that you are aware of the existence of these handbooks on the web? The reason they are not available to all students is, by the way, to save on printing costs.

3. A new piece of software, Peoplesoft, is replacing Heritage as our student administration backbone as of this year. To start with, we’ll only be using this software for limited purposes, but within 3 years we hope to finally have online registration enabled, etc. But this software change means that all sorts of functionality everyone is quite used to has been replaced with something foreign, and this should surely imply an effective and prompt communication stream around what we need to do to be ready to use this new functionality.

But no. While some administrators received such emails, academics did not, and at this University, academics are forced into doing plenty of admin (for reasons I’ll avoid discussing now). So here we are, not having done the requisite training, nor signed the requisite forms, with our students arriving next week. In my case, many hundreds of students, who will all somehow have to manually be allocated to tutorial groups.

Sorry, there’s a customer at the door. More later.

[EDIT]: The full text of Watson’s article can be found here.

Because it seems that Stephen Watson has trained his sights on Antjie Krog for her (I suppose I should say “alleged”, even though the evidence – as presented by Watson – appears pretty clear) alleged borrowing of text from his Return of the Moon (1991) (and other sources) for her recent publication, the stars say ‘tsau’. Given Krog’s prominence and reputation, as well as the moral high-ground she occupies after the publication (and subsequent film) of Country of my Skull (1998), you’d think she’d know better.

South Africa’s pool of writers with any significance is so small that they know each other’s dealings quite intimately, so one would ordinarily think this borrowing a risk not worth taking. But perhaps Krog was encouraged by the recent examples of Darryl Bristow-Bovey and Pamela Jooste, who both recovered well from being accused as plagiarists – in Jooste’s case, no-one really ever seemed to notice.

As a final note on the topic, Ms Krog addressed the University of Cape Town last year, following an invitation by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Njabulo Ndebele. The theme of her presentation? Plagiarism, and how this particular evil could be rooted out of the University.