The Valve - A Literary Organ | On The Origin of Academic Jargon, Part I

<< Theorizing Blogging, Theorizing Theory (and a little on Spivak) | Front Page | On The Origin of Academic Jargon, Part II >>

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

On The Origin of Academic Jargon, Part I

Posted by Scott Eric Kaufman on 04/19/06 at 11:19 PM

As I read Amardeep‘s contribution to the Spivak MMTOR (to which I will contribute when time and dissertation committee permit) I had one of those moments. You know the ones:

You’re walking home from class, grousing under your breath about the "progress" you made on your dissertation yesterday, then suddenly something clicks when you think you hear Karen O screaming something which sounds surprisingly like "ZORK!"

Tonight’s random confluence comes from a click “overhead” as I read Amardeep’s post. I had been thinking about how to reply to Belle Lettre and N. Pepperell‘s comments on something I wrote in an exaggerated fit of annoyance about the idea of "a useable past." The unacknowledged cherry atop my conceptual complaint had been the feather-fluffing prose in which these historical distortions declaimed. I thought I’d write a sarcastic "Note to Self" about new regulations limiting the number of unchecked facts OSHA allows one to balance simultaneously on a soap box. I’d outline the regulations in bureaucratic detail and lull the majority of my audience into a stupor . . . so I ranted instead.

As my prosopalgic complaints accumulated my prosodic ones dropped from sight. All conceptual headache and no complaints about rhetoric! What was I thinking?

This. Such were the thoughts my mind’s eye lazily half-scanned as I read Amardeep’s post after a day of relentless dissertating . . . then it clicked. Endless thought about the Origin of Species had organized an opinion on academic jargon with little or no intervention from my preoccupied mind!

To Be Continued . . .

Comments

Um… what?

By Adam Kotsko on 04/20/06 at 09:57 PM | Permanent link to this comment

I’m building suspense. You know, denying blog readers their beloved instant gratification. Insert some stuff about bat-times and bat-channels, and there you have it.

By Scott Eric Kaufman on 04/20/06 at 11:23 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Holy self-flagellation.

Who’s the insufferable narcissist, again?

By Bob on 04/21/06 at 12:22 PM | Permanent link to this comment

I am!

(But seriously, I wanted to try something different, make people wait and perhaps anticipate themselves what I was going to write, given that they know a little about my dissertation and my sense of humor. ‘Cause if I could get someone else to write it for me, well, that’d be a coup.)

By Scott Eric Kaufman on 04/21/06 at 12:53 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Name:
Email:
Location:
URL:

Valve Links

Current Authors

Past Authors

Most recent articles

Most recent comments

Search:

Archives

Syndication

Validation

Credits

Blogroll

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

On The Origin of Academic Jargon, Part I

Comments

Add a comment: