Acephalous

If I Could Parse This Sentence, The Dissertation Would Be Done

On the eve of the Spanish-American War, Colorado Senator Edward Oliver Wolcott stuffs all my concerns into one gloriously unwieldy sentence:

Who is to say that in the evolution of such a Republic as this the time has not come when the immense development of our internal resources and the marvelous growth of our domestic and foreign commerce and a realization of our virile strength have not stimulated that Anglo-Saxon restlessness which beats with the blood of the race into an activity which will not be quenched until we have finally planted our standard in that far-off archipelago which inevitable destiny has entrusted into our hands?

Evolution and domestic policy and foreign affairs and hyper-masculinity and race-pride and refined blood and imperialism and American exceptionalism all colliding in one impenetrable interrogative!  If I could unpack it succinctly with conviction I'd be long done.

More on Qualifying Exams & an Apology

Many solid comments on the previous post.  I recommend them.  I pen this odd post because I've been busy all day and had to respond to them thus.  (Pressing deadlines do no wonders for casual conversation.)  I wouldn't normally alert anyone to the fact that His Highness has commented on His own post, but this comment's been bothering me:

I think this speaks to a your vision of your blog as more than a platform from which you can declaim.

Not because it's unfair, mind you, but because I've been rather hands-off lately.  I'm in blogging-as-therapy mode—in which writing calms the mind by allowing it to wander into sillier pastures and write this thing called fun—and blogging-as-therapy entails me stopping work on the dissertation, writing something salutary, then shutting down the laptop.

This is something I need to work on.   Maybe I shouldn't post when I know I lack the energy to comment ... but then what about my therapy?  It bothers me when bloggers don't respond to comments, because I envision blogging to be more conversation than bully pulpit.  (And I mean "envision" there.  I'm talking full-bore grandiose wish-casting.  Such is the stuff of my envisionings.)  But without the blogger contributing to the conversation, it starts to seem like an abuse of the conversational ethos.

This must change.  Things must be done. 

They will be ... but not tonight. 

What Are Qualifying Exams Good For?

Short Answer:

Absolutely nothing.

Longer Answer:

Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

Actual Answer:

You have three lists: one for theory, one for genre, and one for period.  (Some substitutions are allowed.)  Each should contain thirty works.  None ever does.  At your list-meeting, the members of your committee decide what belongs on each list.  They never reach a decision.  They "compromise" by including every work any of them mentioned.  You now have nine months to read three lists.  Each consists of sixty works.  Let me do the math for you:

270 / 180 = FUCKED

Because you are.  You cannot read a book every 1.5 days and have anything intelligent to say about it.  But you must read a book every 1.5 days and have something intelligent to say about it.  You must also remember these intelligent things because one day soon the graduate coordinator will escort you into a room in which you will sit with all the books on your lists and write for six hours.  On Tuesday you will write about your A List.  On Thursday you will write about your B List.  Only "write" is not an appropriate word for what you will do.  You do not write:

You eject words.

Your committee wants words, damn it, and you will give them words.  You will not give them punctuation because punctuation is for chumps and you will not give them grammar because they wants words not grammar and they cannot has big word because big word not available in time are been allotted and your word cannot do sense because you to be in rooms for six hour and is under pressure and if you does not performs good you and your asses are to be kicked from grad schools to curbs and then you died.

Fortunately, the qualifying exams have a purpose: namely, to have you do something you'll never again be asked to do in your professional career, so that you may better appreciate how well-suited you are for it and only it.  Because no one does well on their exams.  No one "passes" in the conventional sense.  Your committee is always disappointed.  Everyone on it thought you were going to be the first person in the history of academia to perform exceptionally under extreme duress and on a exam the likes of which you've never taken (nor will ever take again).  This disappointment is reasonable.  To be expected.

You will do equally poorly on your oral examination (covering your C List).  Your committee members will lower their eyes and shake their heads.  That is what they are there for.  They want kabuki from a method actor.  You are there to oblige.  You dance inappropriately and they try not to laugh.  You are tell them sentences with some word and they try not to laughs.  Then they are pass you and you can have happy and alcohol. 

Your life are now for good. 

You is ABD.

Grad Student Horror #3,781: All You Functions Are Under Erasure

I'd forgotten about this particular Tale of Scholarly Embarrassment until I commented on this post at the interesting new blog Perverse Egalitarianism.  Unlike most of the embarrassing material appearing on Acephalous, I didn't write this.  I did, however, seek and receive permission to mock its author; but sadly, the actual essay sleeps peacefully on the hard drive of a non-working laptop.  You'll have to make do with this vicious parody of it instead:

In her "Translator's Preface" to Of Grammatology, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak describes "the structure of writing as the sign under [erasure] because writing has had the negative privilege of being the scapegoat whose exclusion represents the definition of metaphysical enclosure" (lxix).  In what follows, I will demonstrate that Spivak evinces a decided lack of commitment to writing-under-erasure: whereas an honest critic would connect writing-under-erasure to Foucault's conception of the author-function,  Spivak limits her thought (and therefore the radical possibilities thereof) to a wo(e/w)ful cleverness that can neither contain nor obtain the infinite of the aporia to which it points.  She ignores what Foucault calls the "complex operations" subtending and undermining the concept of "the author" in contemporary discourse.  I will not make the same mistake; instead, I will facilitate my reading of Spivak's translation of Derrida's reading of Rousseau via the dual/dueling concepts of "the author-function" and "writing-under-erasure" ...

Before you say anything, the author made one request (besides demanding anonymity): that you not take him to task for making absolutely no sense.  The point is that this person wrote an entire paper in which everything was under erasure.  And why wouldn't it be? 

This student was the sort of "uppity little snot" so many readers wished they had in their classes ... and while I'm sympathetic to arguments like Rufus's, I can't help but think that ... nevermind: I'm sympathetic to arguments like Rufus's.  Stupid as the above paragraph is, it must've been a blast to write.  Its author was alive with the ideas he abused, and that sort of enthusiasm should be encouraged.  No need to grind us down from the get-go, right?

How to Get into the Graduate Program of Your Dreams in Six Simple Steps

Based on a conversation today with a former student who got into three of the top schools in her field and was able to talk them into a bidding war that netted her two years of fellowship and four years of guaranteed teaching:

1. Read all the assigned material.
2. Read related material.
3. Discuss this material during office hours.
4. Work on the quality of your prose.
5. Learn how to edit for clarity.
6. Get a Masters degree from Cambridge.

Follow these six simple steps and you too can attend the graduate school of your dreams.