academic humor

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"derrida's kant"

kant ... cant ... get it??

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 19:56 (nineteen years ago)

Didn't Nietzche make a similar pun in On Good & Evil?

― Huk-L, Wednesday, 18 May 2005 19:57 (nineteen years ago)

Took a class from the author once. Very smart, funny guy so I suspect the book is on the same level.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 19:57 (nineteen years ago)

i was thinking more of those essays and books of/on Theory (note capital "T") where the author uses all kinds of puns, neologisms, and "crazy" associations in an attempt at humor.

almost equally annoying or equally corny are those times when academics use pop lyrics or "pithy" quotes from cultural figures as book or chapter epigraphs.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 20:02 (nineteen years ago)

i do find some things in academic books (intentionally) humorous, but they tend to me more subtle and have a point (often a stinging one) to them.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 18 May 2005 20:03 (nineteen years ago)

Derrida? DerriDON'T!

or, even worse, to the tune of "Chaka Khan (Let Me Rock You)" or whatever it's called

"Jacques Lacan (Let Me Quote You)"

Jacques Lacan? Jacques Lacan? Jacques Lacan Jacques Lacan?

Jacques Lacan, let me quote you, let me quote you, Jacques Lacan.
Let me quote you, that's all I wanna do.
Jacques Lacan, let me quote you, let me quote you, Jacques Lacan.
Let me quote you, let me steal from you.

etc. I can't bring myself to finish it.

― Mayor Maynot, Thursday, 19 May 2005 11:13 (nineteen years ago)

my math prof last year was full of puns in the textbook he was writing.

― Maria (Maria), Thursday, 19 May 2005 12:51 (nineteen years ago)

this is a thread about slavoj zizek isn't it?

― N_RQ, Thursday, 19 May 2005 12:52 (nineteen years ago)

probably

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 19 May 2005 16:41 (nineteen years ago)

i remember a science textbook i had in high school with little sidebar comments which were obviously written by grad. assistants or the like -- one or two 'hells' and 'damns' were thrown in there, along with a borderline suggestive comment sharing the same page with a diagram of the female body.

― fauxhemian (fauxhemian), Thursday, 19 May 2005 18:30 (nineteen years ago)

http://img.tfd.com/thumb/4/48/Derrida.jpg

ihttp://www.greenepages.com/ear/yourmom/pics/Comedian%20and%20actor%20Rodney%20Dangerfield%20(news)%20underwent%20brain%20bypass%20surgery%20April%208,%202003%20at%20UCLA%20Medical%20Center%20in%20Los%20Angeles,%20November%2019,%202002.jpg

― fauxhemian (fauxhemian), Thursday, 19 May 2005 18:42 (nineteen years ago)

Euripedes? Eumenides!

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Thursday, 19 May 2005 18:43 (nineteen years ago)

Vs.

http://www.filmbuffonline.com/images/Dangerfield1.jpg

x-post

― fauxhemian (fauxhemian), Thursday, 19 May 2005 18:44 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/10MatthewSimmons.html

― Marcel Post (Marcel Post), Thursday, 19 May 2005 18:47 (nineteen years ago)

"assume a can opener"

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 19 May 2005 18:55 (nineteen years ago)

Euripedes? Eumenides!

"Euripedes, and his brother Iripadose."

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 19 May 2005 19:15 (nineteen years ago)

arthurdantist, n. One who straightens the teeth of exotic dogmas. "Little Friedrich used to say the most wonderful things before we took him to the arthurdantist!" - Frau Nietzsche

bertrand, n. (1) A state of profound abstraction of mind and spirit; a trance. "He went into a bertrand and began to babble about the class of all classes which are not member of themselves." (2) The state of a person who suffers from delusions (e.g. as of one who doubts that, when he sees a table, he sees a table), or has visions (e.g. of the present King of France). (3) A state of linguistic amnesia, as of one who believes that "this" is a proper name and "Plato" a description.

http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/lexicon/

― elwisty (elwisty), Thursday, 19 May 2005 20:26 (nineteen years ago)

"academic humor" can mean, aside from humor eminating from academe, humor that is academic in broader sense, that is, being theoretically funny but not spontaneously funny. funny enough much academic humor of the first type is also academic humor of the second type.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 19 May 2005 20:29 (nineteen years ago)

If academic is the second humor, the third humor is bile. If the humors are out of balance, you get a tumor.

― Orbit (Orbit), Thursday, 19 May 2005 22:34 (nineteen years ago)

I have this friend who, in the wake of a particularly nutty theory seminar, used to go around singing "Spivak... in my carpet.." to the tune of "Beetles" by Aphex Twin.

― daria g (daria g), Thursday, 19 May 2005 22:53 (nineteen years ago)

The academic humor discussed here is suspiciously similar to the form of humor typically found in music criticism. Or with any other set of geeks, really, but music criticism in particular.

The "Euripedes, Eumenides" joke is one of the best jokes I've ever heard about pants.

― nabiscothingy, Friday, 20 May 2005 02:05 (nineteen years ago)

This Deleuze seminar I took produced some bizarre comic moments, such as the professor telling us mid-discussion that he really didn't think Deleuze just wanted everyone to take a lot of acid and run around the park all day experiencing each other.. And if I recall correctly, one class ended with this black-clad young angry guy getting totally exasperated and bursting out with "I just.. I don't get this, whatever, God is dead, OK?" and one of the stoners suddenly waking up and responding, "No, dude, God is aliiiive." It was everything I'd hoped a class on Deleuze would be, and then some.

― daria g (daria g), Friday, 20 May 2005 06:51 (nineteen years ago)

i think that's my favorite post ever, now (i just ducked out of having to take a deleuze seminar next fall, so now i know what i'm missing)

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Friday, 20 May 2005 07:10 (nineteen years ago)

GET MORE DELEUZE

You don't know what you're missing out on! In retrospect, the introduction of Deleuze into every theory course I've been in has produced some wonderful moments.. from way back in undergrad when a friend of mine was giving a presentation on part of Anti-Oedipus and making no sense whatsoever, while the prof was scrawling pictures of random bodies-without-organs and desiring machines and stuff on the blackboard and chalk dust was flying all over.

I just got out my notes from the full-on semester-long Deleuze Experience and I don't seem to have written any other juicy quotes from class, except the last page of my notebook says:

CLOWNS
DON'T BE MAD @ Deleuze
He wants you to be happy.

I know the last sentence was said by someone, possibly as a closing statement by the prof on the last day, but I have no idea what clowns have to do with any of it.

― daria g (daria g), Friday, 20 May 2005 07:44 (nineteen years ago)

daria this is GOLDEN, can you post at all on the deleuze thread?

― N_RQ, Friday, 20 May 2005 07:47 (nineteen years ago)

I could, but don't want to disrupt the discussion because I'm not all that well informed. I think graduate school broke something and my brain doesn't function properly any more. I've got Anti-Oedipe and Mille Plateaux sitting here (en français, no less) and never find the attention span long enough to get through more than a few pages, and then I forget what I read. Sometimes it's easier to make jokes.

― daria g (daria g), Friday, 20 May 2005 07:57 (nineteen years ago)

there is something quite funny about the concept 'body without organs'.

― N_RQ, Friday, 20 May 2005 08:04 (nineteen years ago)

There's a Paul Virilio book where he quotes someone talking about the telegraph, in like 1760, and I totally believed it, because it jived with all the other lunatic predictions I'd been reading about the radio, dating from like the teens and twenties. And then my "professor" - a guy who went to the school, who'd wangled a class out of the department I was at, and who later got told by the school to "get a real degree" before he could teach there - which I think he did, apparently, an architecture degree from RISD - ANYWAY - told us: "he makes a lot of stuff up" and I thought AHA i was a FOOL for believing someone was talking about telegraphy in 1760-something. And then I realized it was true. Years later. I never would have thought of "looking something up" back then.

xpost: "Even children we've spoken to understand it!!"

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 20 May 2005 08:14 (nineteen years ago)

if i ever lecture, 'sometimes we make stuff up' will be all over my CV.

― N_RQ, Friday, 20 May 2005 08:22 (nineteen years ago)

Count one more lover of the "Euripedes, Eumenides" joke

Deleuze Booty
Guattari Teenage Riot

― Ken L (Ken L), Friday, 20 May 2005 12:26 (nineteen years ago)

i hope someone, somewhere, laughed at my "architecture degree from RISD" = "real degree" joke

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Saturday, 21 May 2005 21:57 (nineteen years ago)

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