Performing the authentic self

Two days ago I wrote about the much-forwarded New York Times article on the problem of plagiarism (read it here), but I get a little nervous about commenting on an article that's commenting on a book that I haven't read. So yesterday morning I e-mailed our library director and suggested that he order Susan Blum's book My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture, and an hour later the book was in my hands. Note to self: next time, check the library catalog first.

So I've been reading My Word, which is simultaneously interesting and infuriating. Blum takes an anthropological approach to college student culture, seeking data through interviews conducted with students over several years. The interviews offer a rare look inside the minds of college students at a selective private college, but they are studded with unexplained ellipses, leading me to wonder what has been deleted. Still, the students' words provide insight into attitudes that often puzzle me when I encounter them in the classroom.

Surely be the most controversial part of Blum's book is her assertion that today's students experience selfhood differently from their forebears. She distinguishes between two types of selves, "the authentic self" and the "performance self":

"The authentic self celebrates uniqueness, individual contribution, essence, fixity, and authorship. It is inner-directed. Its words are its own, and are always meant and sincerely believed. The performance self celebrates collaboration, incorporation, fluidity, and appearance. It is goal-oriented. Its words are derived from many different sources and may be spoken or written in earnest or in jest, with conviction or just to get along" (61).

The academy, says Blum, cherishes the authentic self, while the "performance self, however, is more likely to regard boundaries between its own and others' contributions as permeable, to focus on accomplishing goals by any means necessary, and to regard the origins of textual material as unimportant" (61). Blum admits that students might possess a mixture of these two types of selves, but "[t]o the extent that students share the values of the performance self, they are more likely to regard both cheating and intertextual plagiarism as valid strategies, to juggle outward appearances and behavior to fit others' expectations, and to incorporate texts casually in all aspects of their self-expression" (61).

Here is my question: if today's students are so adept at performing selves to meet the demands of various environments, why can't they create a convincing performance of an authentic self? If the academy promotes and rewards the characteristics of the authentic self, why not perform those characteristics, adopting, if only for a limited time, a concern for originality in written expression and proper citation of others' ideas? Blum justly applauds students' abilities to step into various personas online and in real life (whatever that is these days), but why can't one of those personas be the "authentic self" avatar?

Suppose a student gives me a paper that presents original ideas in the student's own words and properly credits sources: would I have any way of knowing whether the paper is a product of an authentic self or a performance self temporarily adopting the characteristics of authenticity? Would it matter? I hope I'm not in the business of grading a student's sense of selfhood; like my colleagues, I evaluate students based on what they produce, how they perform required tasks. Blum seems to be arguing that "the performance self" makes it more difficult for students to fulfill these tasks without cheating, but an ability to perform various roles in response to changing conditions ought to make students more, not less, adept at producing honest work, or at least the semblance of honest work.

I believe in authenticity and integrity and wholeness and all those quaint values Blum believes are dying out, and I'm not ready to applaud cheating as evidence of the creativity of the performance self. A self that wants my applause just needs to perform the traits of academic integrity. A temporary performance of academic integrity will get the same A as genuine integrity, and the "performance self" just might find integrity addictive.