“Primary texts shall not be taught in this department. What do you think this college does?” From adjunct world, “a comical odyssey detailing the fortunes of the Disposable Adjunct.”
The idea of a course without primary texts is not exactly new. I remember from many years back the (true) story of a course in medieval thought with no primary texts. How would the students know what Aquinas, Scotus, &c. were saying? “The professor will tell them.”
I appreciate the grim comedy of adjunct world, but it makes me want to reach for Lewis Hyde’s observation: “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.”
[The sentences from Hyde appear in “Alcohol and Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking,” American Poetry Review, October 1975.]
Sunday, May 24, 2015
adjunct world
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comments: 3
Yes, re irony.
Reminds me of what Neil Gaiman said about vampires:
"You shouldn't be glutted with vampires: they should be a spice, not a food group."
Nice observation.
Loving the cage: that’s the trauma bond again, isn’t it?
Oh, yes. Creepy, the trauma bond.
You know Jerzy Kosinski's Painted Bird, yeah?
He has a scene where the boy (I think?) releases a wild hare from a cage, but the hare has become so accustomed to being caged, it returns.
That scene made a big impression on me when I read it in my 20s.
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