🚀 go-pugleaf

I have been reading several newsgroups over the last few months, but the one 
that I am most interested in, "bit.listserv.rhetoric," seems to have very 
little traffic.  I have tried to ask myself why such a hot field with so many 
issues at stake would have a very dull discussion group, ie no discussion at 
all.  People ask for help, references, etc to books and articles, but no real 
discussion takes place here.  If that were by design and if this group were 
moderated, I might understand the relatively few postings.  But since there is 
no moderator, I will propose a different hypothesis to explain the low traffic 
on this group:  intellectual property.

It may be possible that people in our field are not discoursing in this forum 
because they wish to retain the right to call their opinions theirs.  If I got 
on the net and argued a major issue, someone could conceivably use my ideas and
make big Camile Paglia bucks by writing a controvertial book, without citing me
or paying me.

Since no one keeps an archive of the stuff that appears here on this newsgroup,
it would be impossible to prove or disprove that certain ideas do or do not 
belong to whomever.

Many people are calling the idea of the "author" into question, and the idea of
intellectual property is being challenged in many quarters, especially in 
rhetoric, where most of us at least have heard the arguments that the 
internally persuasive word is always half someone else's.  Yet, I propose that 
even as we are challenging traditional notions of intellectual property, we 
still act as though we believe in the system.  And maybe that's because we 
must.  The reality of the Academy is that jobs are based on publishing, which
is based on intellectual property.  Many of you, perhaps, are aware of cases in
which collaborators go before tenure committees and are asked to document which
words and phrases and ideas came from them and not their partner(s).

So maybe here on the net, we can begin to challenge old paradigms in relative
safety.  Maybe someone else would like to posit some other explanation, or
perhaps bring up another topic for discussion.  Maybe someone wants to comment
on the implications of discoursing via the net? (I know it would allow me to
insert my voice into a discourse that I cannot afford to enter at traditional
conferences since I am living on a TA salary.)  Who stands to gain by
discussing things here?  Who stands to lose?  Who is being shut out altogether?

Don't respond to me via private Email...post your response here  :)
-- 
Dennis Schenkel, Graduate Student    *****************************************
Ohio State University, English Dept  * Pax Christi Vobiscum...  from one of  *
dschenke@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu   * those who "...wait in joyful hope..." *
    --My opinions are mine--         *****************************************