Writing, in its deepest academic incarnation, is not a solitary or spontaneous act but rather a dialogic engagement with prior thought, a practice that Tara Brabazon, in her exploration of Joseph Harris’s Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts, frames as both a method and a mindset; to write is to rewrite, not only in terms of editing one's own drafts but in weaving, transforming, and reframing the inherited voices and arguments of others; this is no mechanical citation exercise but a conscious act of interpretation, where meaning is not transferred intact from one scholar to another but emerges through contextual friction, creative critique, and intellectual generosity; Brabazon's emphasis on the collective and historical nature of research calls attention to the legacy of ideas and the responsibility we assume when engaging with them—not as ventriloquists parroting earlier scholarship, but as active participants in an evolving discourse; her metaphor of writing as a cover song underscores this beautifully: a powerful rewriting pays homage while generating difference, echoing yet innovating; through rewriting, academic writers both show their lineage and assert their novelty, enacting what she terms a “social practice of writing”; interpretation, then, becomes a mode of respectful resistance, where we represent others fairly before critiquing them, where paraphrasing is not appropriation but positioning, and referencing is not just avoidance of plagiarism, but an act of scholarly integrity; crucially, Brabazon argues that digital culture has accelerated textual movement but eroded interpretive depth, replacing information literacy with the illusion of it—cut, paste, post; thus, genuine rewriting requires slowness, reflection, and a set of critical questions: what is the argument? what do they think they're doing? why now, and for whom? by engaging with these queries, we reclaim rewriting as interpretation with intent, a rigorous and ethical foundation for all scholarly contribution.
