Blog #4 intertextuality

After reading Intertextuality and the discourse Community by James Porter I could not stop thinking about how similar it was to Everything is a Remix. The main idea that everything always comes from something else is prevalent in both these works. Porter defines intertextuality as “the principle that all writing and speech-indeed, all signs-arise from a single network,” it is the idea that “texts refer to other texts and in fact rely on them for their meaning. All texts are interdependent: We understand a text only insofar as we understand its precursors.” He calls in the web of meaning. 

An example of intertextuality or what one could call “remixing” that Porter brings up is the Declaration of Independence. Credited to be written by Thomas Jefferson but in reality is a mix of ideas taken from other people. In the case of the declaration it is probably a good thing that it was a collaborative effort, a mix of ideas and morals from a variety of intellectuals. But, in other cases it tends to bring up the controversy of originality. If everything comes from someone else, how can we be original? Porter wrote, “our most 'creative' acts may be precisely among those that are realized through highly repetitive forms of behaviour. The creative writer is the creative borrower.” I really like this quote because I had never really thought of remixing/intertextuality as a behaviour. It made me think of all the other behaviours that we do that we get from other people. The words we use, the way we act, the way we react. Most things we do we do, we do it because we learnt it from someone else. Observational learning is a huge part of our psychological development. 

Just like our cultures differ from place to place, the way we read, write, and understand literature does as well. In order to completely understand a piece of literature’s intertextuality, one must be able to understand the context of which it comes from. That is where one's discourse community comes in. Porter defines discourse community as, “a group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated… [they] share assumptions about what objects are appropriate for examination and discussion.” Your discourse community can be your friends, family, coworkers, classmates, e.t.c.. It can be anyone that shares the same basic common knowledge as you. A great example of how widespread and large a discourse group can be found one the internet. Every 5 seconds a new meme is posted. That is a made up fact. In reality when I looked up how many memes were posted a day the only straight answer I could get was “so many”. 

It is the content of these memes that truly show intertextuality in action. Pictures, ideas, words, formats used over and over, millions of times, in slightly different ways. Some, making no sense whatsoever if you don’t know all of the contexts, ideas, and messages. If we look at the app Tik Tok it shows the most obvious source of intertextuality/remixing yet. It is literally people using other people's sounds and lip syncing to songs/sketches.