In Praise of Copying

Despite its title, Marcus Boons book is not so much a manifesto as a philosophical meditation ona 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 duplicationwhat Boon calls copia, from a Latin word meaning plenitudewe 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 * Much has been written on the subject of the copy in recent years, none of it so singularly illuminating as Marcus Boons In Praise of Copying. Where the contemporary intellectual-property debate seeks endlessly to distinguish between good copies and bad, Boon cuts straight to the fatally unasked question at its core: What is a copy? From the evolution of counterfeit handbags to the confounding multiplicities of Being, Boon pursues his answers through rich fields of popular culture, technological history, and philosophy both Eastern and Western. A vast, secret life of the copy is here revealed, a road map through the deepest meanings of our age of mechanical reproduction. -- Julian Dibbell * WIRED * In some ways the disarming modesty and accessibility of Boons prosesomething of a rarity in contemporary scholarship in the humanities that issues from academic pressesdisguises 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 * 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 Thurmans handbag and Disneyland. -- Miriam Cosic * The Australian * 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 * Boon takes a stand in praise of copying, seeing it not as a limitation but as a fundamental, if unappreciated, human preoccupation The aim of this work is to demonstrate the historical, political, and philosophical advantages of rethinking the how and why of copying, thereby uncovering the roots of its power to help people understand themselves and the world they live in. -- J. M. Boyle * Choice * Bringing Buddhist insights into a startling and necessary conversation with critical

Marcus Boon is Professor of English at York University, Toronto.