Bad ideas

The Paradoxes of a More Tolerant World : Vishesh Agarwal

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5 thoughts on “The Paradoxes of a More Tolerant World : Vishesh Agarwal”

  1. The first paragraph is an almost word by word rip off from a Slavoj Zizek piece, and should carry an acknowledgement.

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  2. Publishing material without citing the proper source and therefore implying it as original work is called “plagiarism”. Can we at least try to adhere to some basic standards here? Any casual Youtube watcher of Slovoj Zizek’s videos can figure out that 90% of the contents are lifted from his books, speaking events and interviews.

    I did a search for Slavoj and Zizek in this web page and found no hits. I don’t want to be spoilsport here but as a reader I consider Kafila as an important forum for articles on serious subject matter and expect it to maintain a high standard. These kinds of sloppy work defeat that purpose.

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    1. Dear Nemo and AS,
      Thanks for pointing this out. Our apologies for the same. Having said this, let me also say that we publish a lot of guest posts for a variety of different reasons. What you say about non-attribution is absolutely unpardonable in academic writing. But there are other kinds of writing and as you can see from the author introduction at the bottom of the post, Vishesh Agarwal is one of those growing number of people who worked in the corporate sector and have quit their jobs – to find some more meaning in life. And to me it is very interesting that someone from the corporate sector is so deeply influenced by Zizek that he in fact makes his ideas – maybe even his words his own. There are many such instances of even well-known people actually internalizing ideas of others and reproducing them as their own – often simply forgetting how they got to them in the first instance. This is often how, in my estimation, the world of ideas at large, functions. In this world, there are really no strict protocols of citation. However, I do think that the author should still have mentioned the influence that Zizek’s ideas have had on him. As a general practice, we need to develop this culture of attribution/ citation.

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  3. I agree with the comments above that most of the content are slavoj zizek’s ideas and work expressed across his writings. I guess you are right in saying that I should have mentioned that. However the article was meant not as a pice of academic work but an assemblage of some thoughts from not just Slavoj but other intellectuals as well. As far as originality and plagiarism is concerned I would suggest a documentary called ‘everything is a remix’. It has some brilliant insights on copyrighting, intellectual property and other such fields.

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    1. Vishesh, it’s shocking that you should use arguments against intellectual property, and toss around phrases like ‘assemblage of thoughts’ to justify passing off other people’s ideas and even actual words as your own, with no citation. What is dishonest about what you have done is the lack of citation, and then – establishing your own name as the author. This is an opportunistic use of anti copyright arguments to promote yourself. If you are so convinced by the remix idea, you should not care to proclaim yourself as author, either.

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