Career change alert
Fuck science, I should be a "Public Intellectual." You know, make up some nonexistent field (is that tautological? Make up and nonexistent?) cram a few big words into talks that can be replaced by better, clearer words (like tautological?) and go on a speaking tour. Screw working.
Seriously, I fucking HATE "public intellectuals". Total douchebags. "I'm so smart everyone should listen to me so I can tell them how to think." That's not a career, you're not "necessary" (some asshole actually said they're "necessary") you're the asshole at the end of the bar who won't shut his fucking mouth until I stroll down there and pop him. Sorry, I was reeeally drunk.
What's your field?
Contraversialism.
WTF! (nut punch)
And what's your field?
American Cultural Criticism.
WTF! (nut punch)
And you?
Gender Theory
WTF! (exasperated nut punch - my hand is getting sore).
Pompous asses all of them.
And separately, most philosophers? Also douchebags. And most modern philosophers aren't actual philosophers in the traditional sense. They're historians. Of philosophy.
posted by The Head @ 9:14 AM
11 comments
11 Comments:
THREE CHEERS FOR THE GRUMPY HEAD!!!!
You would have *loved* this talk I went to at a local art gallery... there was a panel of art-snobs who each played a song (like, by an actual musician… on a stereo) and then deconstructed, over analyzed, obfuscated and generally participated in an intellectual circle-jerk. I think it was in an attempt to reclaim the part of themselves that secretly wished they were a rock star instead of an art-snob. I felt dirty afterwards.
to the philosophers categorization: Word.
But you said "tautological", how could you? my hermeneutic exegesis: it effed up your whole syllogism. you let the academic hegemony bring you down. why you gotta' be so quotidian like that?
I had some hermeneutic exegesis the other day. Man, I thought I'd never get off the crapper. Leftover thai food. Whew!
Why you gotta hate on the public intellectuals? They may not be "necessary" but they make the world much better. A culture that no one wants to talk about is a pretty sad culture, no?
And yes, Mr. The Head, my legs are spread real wide for your punching. You're so sexy when you're all angry.
Have fun with that, Joshua. You know the waiting is the hardest part.
Public Intellectuals suck, but they're better than New-Age prophets.
Yeah Joshua. I guess I'm not opposed to the idea of a public intellectual.
My opposition prolly stems from the ones I was exposed to. See I went to UIC for grad school and my advisor was a dean under Stanley Fish (my academic mortal enemy) who started the "Center for Public Intellectuals" there and got the worst, most pretentious, most narcissistic dil-rods ever to do the intellectual circle-jerk with their crap academics to come and give talks, etc.
I hate them so much.
I like your blog immensely so you avoid the nut punch. Close your legs you filthy slut.
Seriously, to me, your blog and other one's I like are often more of a well-thought out debate (although I don't know who you're debating). These assholes are giving monologues. Preaching the gospel! I think we are talking about different people.
Hun, what is that picture? It's disturbing.
Well, The Head, I still think you're wrong. I don't think that one can say that William F. Buckley or Susan Sontag don't think their arguments out. Sure they can be pompous, but they are expressing often iconclastic ideas about politics, culture and the arts. There's no room in that game for pansies. In addition, don't you think that one could argue that we (well not you or me per se), that is bloggers, are the new public intellectuals. Yes, formerly many public intellectuals have been closed into a tiny solipsistic world, but now we have all the internets at our greasy fingertips and can engage in a much broader base. Also, you're judging all public intellectuals based on a few douchebags. We could use your logic to also condemn scientists, policemen, doctors, zookeepers and the Jews. But that wouldn't be fair, now would it?
I'm sad that I don't get any nutpunching.
OK Joshua, while this is a conversation best made when we have several whiskeys in us I can see your point.
However, after thinking about your comments I guess what I'm opposed to most is the elitism and exclusionary practices of the public intellectual game. So because of this I agree 100% that bloggers are great for taking this down and so are important as public intellectuals. And yes, not me of course. Unless you want to count a list of my favorite cartoon characters intellectually worthwhile. Which some may.
And if you really want I will give you a nutpunch. Put something pompous up and I'll be happy to accomodate you.
The most glaring problem with Mr. The Head's anti-intellectual screed is that he fails to comprehend the constitutive gap at the heart of his enterprise, the ways in which his own rhetoric cre(neg)ates itself in an endless loop. In physics terms we might think of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, in which the unknowleable always exists and serves to undo the knowable. Mr. The Head cannot see what he doesn't know, namely that his very hostility toward the project of the intellect serves to bolster the public intellectual's case, feeding the intellectual's native paranoia and producing the necessary culturo-politico space in which the public intellectual can function. In this sense, then, Mr. The Head must be seen as exactly what he despises. He is the anti-intellectual as public intellectual. And while perverse, poorly articulated and hetertical, he is, nonetheless America's new and boldest voice for iconoclastic intellectual endeavors. His failure to recognize his own towering importance in the wake of Susan Sontag's death is merely a sign of the disintegration of his constituted and superegotistic mind in favor of the bile-choked remnants of an enraged id-philosopher-king emerging from his sarcophogus of doubt to slay the enemies of public discourse (which is to say, public discourse itself.)
I'm number 1! I'm number 1!
Anyone who quotes Heisenberg usually makes me want to nutpuch them.
And do all them fancy book-leared words mean that the civil rights movement empowered the bigots in power?
'cause they're totally opressing me.
P.S. Nice pompousity Joshua. You've earned that nutpunch.
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