It is with immense sadness that I have to report that my scholarly work has been traduced (yet again!); though mugged might be a better word.
It's easy really: you find a quote that suits your purpose, you copy it making sure to cite it properly; you ignore the surrounding text that gives it context, meaning, and nuance, and then you use it to bolster your own, obviously threadbare, arguments, inviting the unaware reader to think that the copied words have the meaning you give them and not their original ones. If you can score a few mean-spirited points along the way, so much the better.
The offending quotation is in an edited piece soon to hit the publisher's shelves. It's hard to blame the two authors entirely as they clearly regard this sort of thing, and the ungenerous lack of reflexivity that goes with it, as good academic practice, and one of them has more form in this regard than a Derby winner. More appropriate, perhaps, to look to the editors; they are, after all, supposed to protect academic standards – and academics. But who's to keep an eye on the editors, as that long-dead Roman might have said had he been around today. No one it seems.
All very sad really. Not for me, as I'm sure that anyone who knows my work will see the use of the quotation for the pathetic perversion it. But for them. A right pair of scoundrels they may be, but that doesn't mean that some sympathy isn't due: finding it necessary to do things like this cannot be much fun.
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