In Praise of Copying

Reviews / Votes

German critic Walter Benjamin wrote some immensely influential words on the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Luxury fashion houses would say something shorter and sharper and much more legally binding on the rip-off merchants who fake their products. Marcus Boon, a Canadian English professor with an accessible turn of phrase, takes us on an erudite voyage through the theme in a serious but engaging encounter with the ideas of thinkers as varied as Plato, Hegel, Orson Welles, Benjamin, Heidegger, Louis Vuitton, Takashi Murakami and many more, on topics as philosophically taxing and pop-culture-light as mimesis, Christianity, capitalism, authenticity, Uma Thurman's handbag and Disneyland. -- Miriam Cosic The Australian 20101030 In some ways the disarming modesty and accessibility of Boon's prose--something of a rarity in contemporary scholarship in the humanities that issues from academic presses--disguises its profound ambition. In Praise of Copying ranges widely in its interests and seriously and knowledgeably invokes the Western metaphysical tradition, contemporary post-structuralist theory, and the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism to suggest that commonplace distinctions between "genuine" and "fake" or "original" and "copy" compromise rather than enable a comprehensive and responsible understanding of ourselves and the world around us...Boon has a gift for turning the material of the mundane world into the matter of sophisticated intellectual investigation...[This is] a book that deserves real attention and consideration, both in academia and the larger world. -- James Williams PopMatters 20110112 The issues this excellent book discusses can only become more urgent as a generation comes to power that simply takes a free exchange of information for granted. -- Bradley Winterton Taipei Times 20110116 Despite its title, Marcus Boon's book is not so much a manifesto as a philosophical meditation on...a world in which Chinese sneaker manufacturers make original Nikes during the day and fake Nikes at night; in which private copyright enforcers "bust" copy shops for selling unauthorized university course packets, while Google Books posts the same texts online with impunity; in which a young student in Rwanda might use a laptop provided free by the Gates Foundation to distribute illegal copies of Microsoft software. In the midst of an astonishing abundance of copies, and almost limitless networks of duplication--what Boon calls copia, from a Latin word meaning plenitude--we suffer from a near-hysterical fear of unchecked duplication, in the form of "fakes," bootlegs, plagiarized assignments, counterfeit, or pirated goods...In Praise of Copying is too important, and too ambitious, to ignore. -- Jess Row New Republic online 20110523