Why Does Attribution Affect Meaning?
The Ontology of Quotation
Why does it matter so much who says something? Shouldn’t we take the words on their own terms?
“Believe in yourself”
-Bob Marley
“Believe in yourself”
-Pol Pot
“Believe in yourself”
-Ancient Chinese Fragment, found on papyrus
“Believe in yourself”
-drunk stranger at a bar
“Believe in yourself”
-GPT-3
Why do these sayings strike us so differently? (I’m not the first to point this out; it’s the subject of Borges’s “Pierre Menard” about a man who rewrites Don Quixote word for word). Walter Benjamin was obsessed with the subject of quotation—his unfinished magnum opus was to be composed entirely of found material.
Sure, the devil can quote Scripture, but does his quoting invalidate what he is quoting? The devil can also quote mathematics text books.
One reason we care about who says something is because we want to know if the statement is credible. But do credible statements require credible speakers? And do credible speakers always say credible things? No.
Another reason we care about who says something is that we are listening for subtext. The official saying is less interesting to us than the implicit use to which it is being put. Perhaps the subtext of Bob Marley’s “Believe in yourself” is that we, too, can be like him if we follow his advice. We can be successful and chill at the same time if we just believe. This often creates a paradox. For example, to believe in oneself because Bob Marley said it is not to believe in oneself.
While the above example may be obvious, it’s a lesson that carries over in less obvious instances. So much of our decision to quote others is not rooted in the words we are quoting, but in some unsaid identification we have with the author we are quoting. How do you think—or not think—about whom you decide to quote?
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You can read my weekly Torah commentary here.
I've been working on a Walter Benjamin-esque project for quite a while, without ever realizing that it was such. For me, the appeal of quotations is, primarily, divorced from attribution - it's the ability of a line or paragraph to capture what Allen Mandelbaum once described as the asymmetric thrust of a mind in motion. This is, obviously, idiosyncratic, but my criteria are simply: does this make me see something familiar in a new way, or does it help clarify and give shape to something I've felt or believed, albeit vaguely. The secondary appeal of quotations, and the Benjamin-esque approach, does tie back to attribution, but neither for credibility nor subtext. Instead, it's an opportunity to create a conversation out of juxtaposition, a Rashamon-like approach to see how different individuals have thought about and grappled with similar issues. For instance:
It is very difficult to reduce to obedience anyone who does not seek to command (Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin & Foundations of Inequality Among Men)
The great paradox of public life is that leadership requires conformity (Salaita, An Honest Living)
Or:
Happy in danger in a dangerous place / Yourself another self you found at Troy (Logue, All Day Permanent Red)
But this is it now this is the mud of Troy (Oswald, Memorial)
Or:
[T]he march, the burden, the desert, the boredom and the anger (Rimbaud, A Season in Hell)
Travel, he will discover, is no cure for an identity crisis (Tussman, The Burden of Office: Agamemnon and Other Losers)
Etc. etc.