Tuesday 12 April 2011

Introducing the Slackademic

Having met all the cool kids in Welsh literary academia this weekend, I feel it's time to start a meme. Here's the Slackademic Manifesto (in progress: add your own and circulate to your friends).


  • Peer-review, schmeer review. Research is for dissemination by a) Twitter and b) press release into the mid-market tabloids for the high-flyers. The rest lines my hamster-cage.
  • Conferences are for food, warmth, networking, drinking and showing off the latest thing in professorial shorts.
  • Note-taking is verboten. Kindles and iPads are where it's at.
  • Theory is a weapon, not a tool. Use it to crush your enemies. I spit on your Irigaray. Taste my Butler!
  • Permanent jobs are a disciplinary tool wielded by institutions to make us conform. We love dodging conductors and renewing railcards into our forties as we slog from provincial institution to provincial institution.
  • As Gore Vidal said, it isn't enough to succeed, others must fail.
  • Will teach anything, for food.*
  • That 31st paper in the Blackburn University Review of Semiotic Transformations will make us academic catnip.
  • We're not paid to read books. We teach them. There's a difference.
  • We've read so much we're no longer sure of anything. But, hey, we're postmodern, so we're cool with that.
  • EVERYTHING is a text.
Your additions welcome.

*I've taught English, Media, Cultural Studies, Communications, American Studies, Politics, History and Sociology.

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