Assemblage (composition)

Assemblage is a literary concept that refers to a text "built primarily and explicitly from existing texts to solve a writing or communication problem in a new context". The concept was first proposed by Johndan Johnson-Eilola (author of Datacloud) and Stuart Selber in the journal Computers & Composition in 2007. The notion of assemblages builds on remix and remix practices, which blur distinctions between invented and borrowed work. This idea predates modernism, with the quote by Edgar Allan Poe, "There is no greater mistake than the supposition that a true originality is a mere matter of impulse or inspiration. To originate, is carefully, patiently, and understandingly to combine."

Influence

Johnson-Eilola and Selber write that assemblage is influenced by intertextuality and postmodernism. The authors discuss the intertextual nature of writing and assert that participation in existing discourse necessarily means that composition cannot occur separate from that discourse. They state that "productive participation involves appropriation and re-appropriation of the familiar" in a manner that conforms to existing discourse and audience expectations. In reference to intertextuality, Johnson-Eilola and Selber cite The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid. In this book Brown and Duguid state that the meaning of and use for a text is directly influenced both by its source texts and the broader textual context in which it participates. Building upon this notion, Johnson-Eilola and Selber position assemblage as a style of composition situated within postmodernism.