www.dichtung-digital.de/2001/06/09-Federman From Surfiction to Hypertext Interview with Raymond Federman 0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 RS: Well, those are harsh words for all hyperfictionists. I'll leave it to them to prove you wrong, and rather continue to our next question. You spell plagiarism as pla(y)giarism, arguing that 'stealing' words is a playful process, that we sometimes don't even know our sources and that therefore plagiarism is to a certain extent inevitable. However, there is an active pla(y)giarism where the transmitter does not pretend to be the author but rather the author pretends not to be the transmitter. I am talking about those artist groups like ubermorgen.com, rtmark.com and theyesmen.org, who fake and manipulate websites of corporations to tell their stories in a different way. Mark Amerika describes this concept of remixing as blurring "the lines between fiction and faction, the Truth and the truth," and remarks on the "(h)ac(k)tivist or interventionist role in the evolution of this new medium" (interview in dichtung-digital) . One could say that this new genre of 'realfiction' employs the lie to question the 'truth': a quite interesting and even entertaining way of reflecting critically on writing and presentation. Does this fit with the demands of surfiction and critifiction?

RF: Absolutely. As I argued in my 1976 essay entitled "Imagination as Playgiarism,"' language belongs to everyone in the same measure, language is democratic, therefore anyone can displace, borrow, and even steal pieces of language. All writing is done in relation to previous writing. To write then becomes a surplus, an excess of what has already been written, or what already exists as writing. Thus, in contemporary literary all considerations of model, influence, causality, and of course originality, are rendered vain. This means that the act of plagiarism cannot come after a text given as initial or original, even if such a text were to exist, for it would itself have been priorily reproduced or imitated or plagiarized. There are no original texts because the first original text has been lost, misplaced, forgotten. In the light of this realization, Surfiction exposes the writer as a mere pla[y]giarist, one who playfully and deliberately displaces language, and in so doing eliminates the idea of a central authoritarian dispatcher of the text and of its meaning. Or to put differently. Playgiarism cannot be explained because its laws are unwritten. Like incest, it is a taboo. It cannot be authenticated. The great playgiarizers of all time (Homer, Shakespeare, Rabelais, Montaigne, Sterne, Diderot, Lautréamont, Proust, Beckett, Federman) have never pretended to do anything else. Inferior writer deny that they playgiarize because they confuse Plagiarism with Playgiarism. They are not the same. The difference is enormous, but no one has yet been able to explain it. Playgiarism cannot be measured in weight or size. It is as elusive as what is plagiarized. Plagiarism is sad. It whines. It cries. It feels sorry for itself. It apologizes. It feels guilty. It hides behind itself. It lies about itself. Playgiarism on the contrary laughs all the time. It exposes itself. It is proud. It makes fun of what it does while doing it with effrontery. It is cunning. It denounces itself. It tells the truth about itself. RS: This encouraging plea for playgiarism can mark the end of our conversation for now and show us the way to go. Thank you very much for the interview. home