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?)

it's the economy, stupid

On my short drive home from campus today (I almost never drive, but it was raining and I'm exhausted), I heard a report on American Public Radio's show Marketplace about saving money and bartering will slow economic recovery because, as it was explained, if you have your friend cut your hair instead of going to a salon, and if you cook dinner for your friend in exchange, instead of your friend going out to a restaurant, you reduce economic activity, because you reduce the demand for goods and services.

Wrongo! Bartering is economic activity! The Missourian they discussed on the program had a demand for a service, and produced a good in exchange. In fact, I had a friend cut my hair in exchange for a dinner once in graduate school, and we constantly bartered to one another our goods and services - growing food, brewing beer, moving, pet care, child care, even construction, plumbing, electrical work, mechanics. None of us had any cash, because we were impoverished grad students. We had no lack of demand for goods and services, and we engaged in a great deal of economic, productive activity to meet our own and one another's needs. I spent several summers during grad school "unemployed," but without collecting unemployment or welfare. I didn't try to set a dollar value on the amount of my productivity and how much I "earned" in that way, but I do know I rarely needed to buy vegetables, for instance.

What they mean to say, properly put, is that the more we produce for ourselves rather than consume from another source, and the more we exchange with one another rather than purchase, the less monetary activity there is. Money is not equal to economy.

Amazing how easily these ideological words and ideas about economy are rolled out in our culture, and how easily we forget, or neglect that the basis for economy is production and exchange, not just money or share prices.