Sometimes I get tired of academic stuff. Here's part of an entertaining response paper I wrote for a class a while back that expresses my frustration with academic stuff. Enjoy.
Look, I Wrote a Paper Just For You, Mr. Giroux; Make Some Snide Comment About its Unprofessionalism, Why Don’t You?
Recently I read the article, “Reading Texts, Literacy, and Textual Authority,” by Henry A. Giroux. First of all, I found it difficult to understand...
Nice job using “Teachers of English” instead of “English teachers”, Mr. Giroux, you Latin-studying very very very intellectual gentleman. It sounds so academic; I’m sure your alcoholic father would be proud.
I don’t totally understand where you’re coming from, Mr. Giroux, when you say, “This means understanding the limits of our own language as well as the implications of the social practices we construct on the basis of the language we use to exercise authority and power.” But I’m sure, Mr. Giroux, that you must be a communist.
Giroux quotes other authors profusely. I’ve noticed that high-class academia-people usually do that, of course with always the correct citation form. How many years of graduate school did it take you, Mr. Giroux, Huh? How many years of graduate school did it take you to learn correct citation and get with the proper stuff and say the proper stuff? Quit hiding behind your PHD, Giroux. Confront me one on one, like a man! Take your shirt off and get inside the dirt circle with me! Hate to break it to you, Mr. Giroux, but they don’t provide vegetable trays and punch where I’m gonna take you!
Of course I really just wanna be like you, Mr. Giroux. What do you think I’m in college for? What do ya think I’m reading all these namby-pamby classics for? Cuz I like ‘em? Wrong! It’s cuz I wanna write a dissertation the way you wrote a dissertation. An’ I wanna move my tassel to the other side just like you moved your tassel to the other side an’ I wanna sit with high degree holders and get drunk off of expensive wine an’ complain that society is hurting everybody and I wanna get my name on a plaque n’ get my name on a certificate n’ communicate via very technological technology like an electronic video holographic web cast or something an’ I wanna slowly smoke and slowly sip booze just like you do an’ I wanna leave my wife and leave my kids and curse the day I was born, just like you do, every night, Mr. Giroux. Every night when you’re alone in a cashmere bathrobe, Mr. Giroux. When your alone and cursing, hanging your head down and breaking glass bottles on your living room floor an’ I wanna be just like that. Just like that, Mr. Giroux. Just like that.
You’re alone, Mr. Giroux. You’re alone and cursing and your textile-mill-working father is dead.
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3 comments:
Forget academia, you should be a creative writer.
The Boid
By the way, what did your teacher think of this?
My teacher liked it. She said I was mean to Mr. Giroux in it, but since I was just responding to the article we read, it was fine. There's this touchy-feely approach to teaching literature and English called reader-response where there is no one right answer, it's just however you feel, pretty much. So I was just responding to the text. Proponets of reader-response ask, "How can a response, like an emotion, be wrong?"
How can a response, like an emotion, be wrong?
Is that a serious question? Let's say I read a particulary beautiful Shakespearean sonnett or listen to a particularly beautiful piece by Mozart and my response is a seething anger. If that is not wrong, what is it? Is any attempt to make a qualitative distinction between responses against some academic code? I understand there can be a wide range of valid responses, but it seems like there still can be a response that is "wrong."
The Boid
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