Sung to the tune of the Modern Major General Song from Pirates of Penzance.
I am the very model of a Public Intellectual,
I write on topics cultural, political and sexual.
The ethos of our Zeitgeist I’ll unpack with perspicacity,
From novels to polemics on a discourse of mendacity.
I’m very well acquainted too with theory post-colonial;
I understand the Other in a manner intersectional;
About the fluid nature of perception I am vehement,
And never make it known when I’m ambivalent or ignorant.
(And never… etc.)
My essays on the essay as a genre have been well-received,
My footnotes vary widely between overstuffed and make-believe.
In short, in matters cultural, political and sexual,
I am the very model of a Public Intellectual.
(In short… etc.)
Against a bourgeois ethic of complacency I militate,
My columns in the Village Voice are only faintly out of date,
I deconstruct pop culture and I analyze society,
And theorize on sex with frank and shocking impropriety.
New York Review of Books publishes all my editorials,
I recontextualize th’ extinction of the voice authorial.
I write in language only fools and telepaths could claim to read;
And frequently post updates to my slightly racist Twitter feed.
(And frequently… etc.)
My open letters to the famous garner much celebrity,
My feuds with other thinkers have created many enemies.
In short, in matters cultural, political and sexual,
I am the very model of a Public Intellectual.
(In short… etc.)
When I of my own free will go to meetings of the faculty,
When my department needn’t have just people who agree with me,
When I have learned what’s science and what’s Freudian psychology,
When I’ve stopped making metaphors that seem to laud phrenology,
When I have learned to substitute concision for prolixity,
When people without Ph.D.’s have ever even heard of me,
When research, polling, and some common sense I’ve better scrutinized,
You’ll say a better Intellectual had never problematized.
(You’ll say… etc.)
For my grasp on how the world works, though I’m puckish and heretical,
Has yet to realize that the word “praxis” is dispensable,
But still in matters cultural, political and sexual,
I am the very model of a Public Intellectual.
(But still… etc.)
Notes From Punderground 