Tracking down lit crit plagiarism leads to “discourses of madness”

This one brings together a bunch of our favorite topics, including plagiarism, poetry, and predatory publishers. Look, alliteration!

Richard Lawrence Etienne Barnett, who often publishes under the name R-L Etienne Barnett, has been accused of plagiarizing at least 18 articles by other scholars, mostly analyses of French poetry, as well as duplicating his own work at least eight times.

Most recently, French literary theorist Michel Charles published a dissection of Barnett’s history of plagiarism on lit crit site Fabula. Barnett had sent an article to Poétique, the poetry journal Charles edits. Charles quickly realized something was amiss (all quotes in this post were originally in French, and have been translated via Google):

I found very odd two or three expressions that did not fit in the same vein as the rest (“Cloudy suspicion”, “trans-temporal literary career”, “saillamment”). These microdérapages led me to believe that the text could have been corrected, and corrected wrong…I could not find the key to this little stylistic mystery. Intrigued, I looked if, by chance, there was another version of this text. There was one: it was an article by Jacques Poirier published in 2009.

It’s not clear who Barnett is or what he does. He is listed at several places around the internet as the provost of for-profit college the University of Atlanta, but the U of A administration website doesn’t include his name. The only mention on uofa.edu is this poster from 2008 announcing that he’s the editor of a new journal put out by the institution, Virtualities: International Review of Distance Learning. The journal doesn’t appear in Google Scholar, and a U of A email address listed on the call for papers bounces.

In July, one of the journals in which Barnett has been accused of committing plagiarism, Neohelicon, put out a call for papers for a special issue edited by Barnett. The topic? “Discourses of madness.”

Here’s the list of Barnett’s plagiarism, compiled by Charles:

1. Jean-Louis Cornille, “White, pretend and reality” Literature , 23, 1976 and Romane Review , 11/2, 1976 (Camus). Article plagiarized in 1999 and 2000: “The inaugural sham”, Symposium , 53/2, 1999; Semiotics of Camusian opening” Revista Letras , 53, 2000.
2. Jan Baetens, “False and true marginal margins,” The Creator Spirit , 38/1, 1998. Article plagiarized in 2000, 2006 and 2010: “Poetic margins,” Revista Letras , 54, 2000; “Das palavras if calaram” Agulha-Revista de cultura , 52, 2006; “Autopsies center” Neohelicon , 37/2, 2010. (B. takes three plagiarism of delivery of the Creator Spirit that he himself directed. Thus, it steals a person he probably asked himself to participate in this issue. In addition, in its plagiarism, B. returns safely to the presentation he wrote for the original publication (?) – but with an approximate title and references pages erroneous Finally, it gives the subtitle to his second “copy. Prosopopéia para uma margem defunta “is the translation of the title Marc Blanchard gave his own contribution in this issue of The Creator Spirit . “Prosopopée for a Dead margin” This is called the daring.)
3. André Ricard, “archaic and theater news,” Dalhousie French Studies , 41, 1997. Article plagiarized in 2001 and 2002: “Conventions and contemporary theater,” Journal of the History Theatre , 53, 2001; “Theatrical transpositions” Revista Letras , 58, 2002. (Note 1 of the authentic text, “text of the final conference APLAQA [Association of Acadian and Quebec Literatures Atlantic] in October 1996,” gives the note 1 of plagiarism, “a slightly modified text lecture at the School of Higher Studies in Social Science [ sic ] (Paris) in January 2002, “Loyalty to the last detail and a personal touch at the end..” This test synthesis would it have been viable without the long meditative interview with Gérard Genette made ​​me friendship in January 2002, in Paris? Too rare privilege. “)
4. Philippe Met, “Word of circumstance,” Symposium , 55/2, 2001 (Du Bouchet). Article plagiarized in 2002, 2004 and 2006: “Semiotics of intertextuality,” Revista Letras , 57, 2002; “Postmodern adrift,” Nottingham French Studies , 43/3, 2004; “On the circumstantial poetic” Romane Review , 41/1, 2006.
5. Jean-Pierre Martin, “The Origin of Painting”, French Forum , 16/3, 1991 (on Michaux). Article plagiarized in 2003 and 2004: “Désignifier plural” Revista Letras , 59, 2003; “Issues of the unrepresentable,” Romane Review , 39/1, 2004.
6. Lucien Dällenbach, Mosaics , Ed. du Seuil, 1999, c. VII, p. 115 s. Plagiarized text in 2003, 2004, 2007 and 2008: “Culinary Nightmares, nausea narrative,” Revista Letras , 60, 2003; (See Note 17: “The work of Dallenbach, L. La Canne de Balzac Paris. Corti, 1996, provides as penetrating observations that newly-passed “Again audacity.) “La Guerre du goût” Romane Review , 39/2, 2004; “O fim back comilões – Para um novo paradigmatic cultural” Agulha-Revista de cultura , 58, 2007; (Final statement: “Stephen R.-L. Barnett (França, 1963) Tem atualmente dupla cionalidade, our lively e Estados Unidos Ensaista, crítico Literário, philosopher e livros como editor Autor of… The post-modern to drift ( 1986), Beckettian Aporia (2002) Tests of the labyrinth (2005), e Shakespeare’s Antinomies: An Altered Visitation (2006) “). “On the chaotic fragmentation of meaning,” Neohelicon , 35/1, 2008. (At the end of the first plagiarism, B. expresses its thanks to Laurent Jenny, for the last two, she goes to Jean-Pierre Dupuy.)
7. John Plotz, “Objects of Abjection,” Twentieth Century Literature , 44/1, 1998 (on Genet). Article plagiarized in 2005: “Of Hermeneutics and Difference,” Orbis Litterarum , 60/5, 2005.
8. Paul Raymond Côté, “Ellipse and reduplication,” Romanic Review , 85/1, 1994 (on Modiano). Article plagiarized in 2007 and 2012: “Representation and modianesques hiatus,” Orbis Litterarum , 62/1, 2007; “Absence and modianesques subterfuge” Neohelicon , 39/1, 2012.
9. Zoe Christmas, “The departure of Arthur Rimbaud” Viatica 2007. Article plagiarized twice in 2007: “The endless start,” Romane Review , 42/2, 2007; “Poetics of flight”, The Romance Letters , 61 / 1-2, 2007.
10. Pierre Neveu, “Cioran or illness of eternity”, French Studies , 37/1, 2001. Article plagiarized in 2008, 2009 and 2011: “The temporal issues or cioranienne rage,” The Romance Letters , 62 / 1-2, 2008; “Cioran and the temporal abyss,” Romane Review , 44/1, 2009; “Apories cioraniennes” Neohelicon , 38/1, 2011.
11. Jean-Pierre Martin, “The critical and voice,” French Studies , 39/1, 2003. Article plagiarized in 2008. “Issues of the word” Neohelicon , 35/2, 2008. Eric P. Levy, “The Mimesis of Metempsychosis in Ulysses , ” Philological Quarterly , 81/3, 2002. Article plagiarized in 2009: “The semiotics of ‘Transit’ in Joyce’s Ulysses , ” Neohelicon , 36/1, 2009.
12. Michel Lacroix, “A brilliant discretion” Tangent , 80, 2006 (on Paulhan). Article plagiarized in 2011. “The Myth of the gray eminence,” The Romance Letters , 65 / 1-2, 2011.
13. Stéphane Baquey, “Denis Roche, the rage of expression,” Pretext , 21/22, 1999. Article plagiarized twice in 2011: “Transgressive Games,” Romane Review , 46/1, 2011; “The events of the maze rochien” Neohelicon , 38/2, 2011.
14. Jacques Poirier, “Discontents meaning” French Studies , 45/1, 2009 Article plagiarized in 2013: “Around the Void” Neohelicon , 40/1, June 2013. (Under a new title, this is the article that was recently proposed Poetics .)
15. Laurent Demanze “The possessed and the dispossessed,” French Studies, 45/3, 2009. Article plagiarized twice in 2013: “Words dislocated” Neohelicon , 40/2, 2013; “Poetics of the spectral break,” Romane Review , 48/1, 2013.
16. René Audet, “Places and pragmatic monstrosity in the narrative prose of Eric Chevillard,” Tangent , 91, 2009. Article plagiarized in 2014: “Words adrift” Neohelicon , 41/1, 2014.
17. Audrey Camus, “The strange lands of the insignificant,” French Studies , 45/1, 2009. (This article belongs to the same collection that section of Jacques Poirier, No. 15. B. took the last words of Audrey Camus contribution to titrate plagiarism Jacques Poirier he proposed Poetics “[ …] modern fantasy takes the reader to the toils of the insignificant“- I emphasize result of this loan: this plagiarism is put in relation to plagiarism No. 15. Also audacity)..
18. Article plagiarized in 2014: “Désignifier plural” Neohelicon July 2014. (B. has used this title for plagiarism on Michaux published in Revista Letras , Case No. 5) ^[1] .

Accusations of plagiarism — or at least duplication, aka self-plagiarism — have been following Barrett since at least 2001, when Princeton French professor Volker Schröder published a book review, which included the assertion that Barnett’s introduction was an instance of self-plagiarism. From the 2001 review:

In summary, it seems that Richard Lawrence Barnett has managed a “coup” remarkable and certainly unprecedented in the Racine Education: write two essays and take eight separate publications in prestigious journals worldwide.

Barnett — who apparently claimed he belonged to the CNRS (France’s Centre national de la recherche scientifique) in a letter to Charles — is on the editorial board of the American International Journal of Biology. This certainly lends credence to Jeffrey Beall’s assertion that AIJB publisher American Research Institute for Policy Development is one of the world’s many “predatory publishers.”

We’ve reached out to Barnett, Schröder, Charles, and AIJB, and will update with anything else we learn.

In the meantime, we’ll take some solace in this Mark Twain quote, which appears in Barnett’s Neohelicon call for papers:

When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.