May 5, 2010
[Marcus Boon's] second full length book, In Praise of Copying, will be
published by Harvard University Press in Fall 2010. The book is devoted
to a deceptively simple but original argument: that copying is an
essential part of being human, that the ability to copy is worthy of
celebration, and that, without recognizing how integral copying is to
being human, we cannot understand ourselves or the world we live in.
In spite of the laws, stigmas, and anxieties attached to it, the word
“copying” permeates contemporary culture, shaping discourse on issues
from hip hop to digitization to gender reassignment, and is particularly
crucial in legal debates concerning intellectual property and
copyright. Yet as a philosophical concept, copying remains poorly
understood. Working comparatively across cultures and times, MB
undertakes an examination of what this word means—historically,
culturally, philosophically—and why it fills us with fear and
fascination. He argues that the dominant legal-political structures that
define copying today obscure much broader processes of imitation that
have constituted human communities for ages and continue to shape
various subcultures today. Drawing on contemporary art, music and film,
the history of aesthetics, critical theory, and Buddhist philosophy and
practice, In Praise of Copying seeks to show how and why
copying works, what the sources of its power are, and the political
stakes of renegotiating the way we value copying in the age of
globalization.
Book blog here.