Plagiarism: Analysis of the Cultural Grounds of Excuse

The article is devoted to the study of the cultural foundations of such a phenomenon as plagiarism. It is revealed that plagiarism, like theft and appropriation of authorship of someone else’s work, has its roots in the mythology of culture: the theft of fire by Prometheus, the theft of the blessing of the birthright by Jacob. Plagiarism is a form of self-identification based on an act of passive protest. Through it, the subject is removed from the current government and constitutes its own autonomy. Assuming that theft comes from need, lack of something, plagiarism is also carried out from a lack of self, and in the act of appropriation there is an attempt to compensate for sovereignty. The cultural conditions of postmodernity are described, which exclude plagiarism from the condemned deviations: intertextuality, multiplicity, Death of the Author, leveling the boundary between opposites. Today, the Author is gradually being eliminated from the text and this manifests itself in a special temporal connection: the modern Author existed before the text, and today’s scriptwriter arises simultaneously with the text. The text becomes open, free to make or extract meaning. It can be observed that postmodern discourse implements a kind of apology for plagiarism, considering it an important component of creativity. Plagiarism studies reject the moral assessment of the phenomenon in favor of demonstrating the imaginary boundaries between the copy and the original. The conclusion is made about the need to return the study of plagiarism to the moral field, the return of conscience and “cognitive abilities”.