Doris Kearns Goodwin -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 11:54:01 04/30/08 Wed
Author: Jonathan Dunn
Subject: Doris Kearns Goodwin

While reading about Stephen Ambrose I came across an article about Doris Kearns Goodwin. She had a similar situation, although her plagarism was of a more severe nature. She copied whole sections of other books in her work "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys" without any citation. The author of one of the plagarized books, however, discovered this and the publisher paid him, a year after the book's publication, an undisclosed sum of money to keep quiet.

When the scandal broke about her plagarism, Goodwin denied knowledge and pretended to take quick action to make sure her work was accurate. And yet she had known about that problem for the previous 10 years.

But here's the mimetic part: when another author, Joe McGinniss, wrote a similar book (thus imitating and becoming a rival for a position of authority on the subject) she accused him of using uncited material from her book. Having knowingly plagarized (or at least knowing that she plagarized accidentally) she publicly attacked a rival who tried to do the same thing to her.

On the one hand she wants to be the eminent authority on the subject, meaning that she wants everyone to defer and refer to her on the matter. At the same time, however, she herself refered to the real authority without admitting it. Then, when another writer did what she wanted, in refering to her, but did not make her the authority, she tried to reject his imitation.

I wonder if they both plagarized the same source, if he wasn't imitating her at all but both her imitating some other writer.

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