Cheaters by Jean-Pierre Martinez

Who Owns a Work: the Person Who Creates It, or the One Who Secures Its Social Recognition?

Plagiarism is only the most visible form here of a broader process of appropriation. More than a text has been stolen: it has been given the social power of a name, connections and status. The work thus seems to belong less to the person who writes it than to the person whom institutions are prepared to recognise as its author. The argument put forward by those who appropriate the work and support that appropriation contains an element of truth — talent does not guarantee visibility — but this insight serves above all to turn a relationship of domination into a supposed collaboration.

Within the enclosed setting, the struggle for possession of the manuscript becomes a struggle for control of the narrative. Each person tries to impose their own version of events and assign the others the roles of victim, culprit or accomplice. The final appearance of a text entitled *Plagiarism*, which reproduces the story itself, completes the blurring of the boundary between the original work and its appropriation. The official consecration of the recognised author, now independent of what he has actually written, then reveals a social mechanism operating in a closed circuit: once manufactured, reputation eventually produces its own evidence of the talent it claims to reward.