(Apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan … and also to my grad school teachers who had at least a modicum of ambivalence toward the velvet prison of academia. All one of them.)
I am the very model of an academic radical.
I lead faculty meetings when I’m not on a sabbatical.
I speak a fluent PoMo,
Drive a Prius and a Volvo,
I’m the deepest thinker of our time
(within a narrow paradigm),
I am the very model of a tenured US radical.
I love to sprinkle made-up words
In all my books and articles,
While deconstructing logic
Into non-sequential particles.
I’m not afraid to take a stand
That no one else can understand.
That’s why I am the model of a departmental radical.
I know that opaque theory
Is considered quite delectable,
By editors of venerable
Journals most respectable.
The trick is in the phrasing,
My abstractions are amazing.
Oh I am the very image of a full professor radical.
The canon has no chance
’gainst my interpretive acuity.
I trace the absent signified
In Charlie Brown and Lu-u-cy.
I scoff at mere “reality,”
It’s all just textuality,
That’s why I’m the epitome of a leftie with a Ph.D.
I pen fascinating papers
underwritten by foundation grants.
And read them at a conference in
Geneva, Rome or Paris, France.
I sign MoveOn petitions,
I’m against the Inquisition.
Isn’t that a bold position
for a tenured US radical.
