Stephen Ambrose -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 08:21:43 04/30/08 Wed
Author: Jonathan Dunn
Subject: Stephen Ambrose

The Stephen Ambrose plagarism debacle seems like a mimetic rivalry played out within the academic world. First, I thought it was interesting that his basic response to his inaccuracies and plagarism was something like, "I am a writer more than an academic." This is nonsense for two reasons: 1) plagarism is not writing; he is more like a sophisticated Xerox machine than either a writer or an academic; 2) he plagarized on his PhD dissertation, which seems like a largely academic undertaking.

Second, he takes other historians as his model, but the external mediation goes so far that he copies their prose instead of simply their prose style. Rather than do original work, he retells the work of others. Further, I thought it revealing that while writing about Custer and Crazy Horse he actually grew his hair out and wore cowboy attire. His imitation, in every respect, is too extreme.

Third, he used his son as his main research assistant and then shifted blame onto his son once the scandal broke. He didn't give his son credit previously, as if preventing a rivalry between them. But, when the heat came, he acted as if the son had erred in his zeal to imitate the father instead of Ambrose erring in his zeal to imitate other historians.

Fourth, Ambrose soon became scapegoated by veterans who felt that the political shift in America left them unappreciated. The anti-Vietnam generation became distrustful of all military action, thus distancing themselves from the veterans of WWII, and these veterans blame this distancing on the work of Ambrose which mistakenly presented some of them in an unfavorable light. And yet it is not possible for Ambrose's work to have had such an effect, because he wrote far after the effect came to be. Ambrose himself was influenced by the Vietnam generation early on, having once been fired for heckling Nixon at a rally. In other words, he couldn't have brought about this unfavorable view which the veterans claim.

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