The Right to Copy

Abstract: This article does not seek to justify the purloining of text by one author from another but instead looks to examine its emergence within modernity. It takes a notorious case of copying, Slavoj Žižek's unacknowledged use of a review by "Stanley Hornbeck," in order to fathom the theoretical and political stakes in differentiating the copy, particularly with regard to property rights in the contemporary era. The right to copy includes, aesthetically, the right to usurpation and is not simply outside social struggle. Questions of academic integrity continue, but sooner or later the larger problem must be reengaged. In modernity what is property in the copy and its right? Our doubles are not purely reducible to a technological problem—AI automatons who take your ghost but leave your shell. They represent a pivot in socialization about what is proper property and the ways in which knowledge can be authenticated.