shazam, I think

After much hand-wringing and angst, I believe I have successfully revised "the goofy paper," per the occasionally-apposite reviewers' comments and a decidedly excellent conversation with the journal's guest-editor for this issue. It's still approximately 62% loony, and still contains three absolutely egregious puns, so I think, on the whole, this is a win.... presuming they actually publish the damn thing and anybody reads it.

My favorite pun is the most brutal. I compare phenomenological description to "extraordinary rendition," and suggest that certain ways of conducting phenomenological description are violent, and even that they commit vivisection. Nasty, eh? And do you know who'll get that? My loveliest, who read the whole damn goofy paper, and to whom I've read this version, maybe two or three friends of mine to whom I've sent this abomination, and, almost literally, nobody else.

(Here's a secret about academia nobody wants you to know. In the humanities, the so-called "discussion" taking place through publication is a crock. Of the 40 papers I've presented at conferences, and the half-dozen or so peer-reviewed articles I've published, people have contacted me to discuss them almost three times. I have emailed several folks whose articles I use in my classes, and every time, the authors are thrilled and somewhat startled that I've responded in any way.)

(I digress.)

Makes ya wonder why I do it, eh? Answer's in the question, bub. If they can't be bothered to read and respond and carry out this alleged conversation, rather than just throw bombs, then, I say, screw these people.

And that's my fundamental attitude toward academic publication and the big time conference circuit. And that's likely why I'm so rarely invited to join in.

(For instance, has anyone else noticed that Jacques Derrida never had any pants?)