In Woody Allen's 1980 film Stardust Memories, a director is sitting in front of a live audience answering questions about his latest film. One audience member asks if a particular scene in his latest movie is an homage to the original version of Frankenstein. The director replies: “An homage? No, we just stole it outright.” For a brief moment, this joke becomes a sly admission allowing us to glimpse the logic of appropriation in terms of aesthetic or intertextual poaching. For indeed, what separates an homage from a burglary, other than a stated intention by the artist? And who is to judge the consequences of one over the other?

In this article we would like to briefly contextualize the link between appropriation and the notion of private property (via ownership and authorship), before arguing that this link has been dissolved in the cultural logic of contemporary aesthetic production. Our motivation is itself linked to a desire to escape the categories of original and copy which, despite celebrated claims to the contrary, continue to privilege the quasi-sacral realm of artistic production – including music – while simultaneously greasing the wheels of the market.

Appropriation implies a form of violence, a taking or annexing of something to oneself with or without the sanction of the law. The dictionary definition also implies motivation, namely “To make, or select as, appropriate or suitable to,” or “To make proper, to fashion suitably.” Appropriation thus unfolds according to the logic of suitability, utility or relevance, and therefore smuggles in a number of notions related to aesthetic justification and indeed, to continue the equation made above, rationalizing robbery.

Here we would like to introduce a loose chronological genealogy for this wider process, beginning with allusion and moving through appropriation to sampling.

• 1) allusion is best defined in poetics and philosophies of language, in which it has had a place for over 2500 years. Whether in terms of direct nomination, turn of phrase, rhythm, form, theme or media, the new piece of work refers, either explicitly or more covertly, to one or several previous works or traditions. Allusion is just one technique among others, however; it is not a principle or necessary condition of all composition, but rather a possibility of linkage.