Last updated on November 26, 2023
NOTE: This rant is cross-posted and expanded from the Rogue Rhetorician, where I focus on rhetoric and philosophy.
It’s been a decade since an academic supervisor wrote that my various creative and non-fiction writings were all of little value. He took my sarcasm, my jabs at academia and academic writing, seriously and used those words against me.
Though I wonder if his attitude reflected his clear misunderstandings of autistic traits, it’s quite possible the supervisor simply had an impaired sense of humor. (That’s not to excuse the discrimination I encounter throughout academia, which continues to promote myths about autistics, ADHD, and Neurodiversity in general. Disclosure only compounded problems for me in the past.)
I wondered how anyone could be so gullible, until those above him took his representation of my works seriously. As it turned out, a lot of educated people who have read and taught Jonathan Swift don’t recognize satire or sarcasm. That’s probably because I was mocking — and continue to mock — academic culture.
Yes, I have written that degrees and credentials don’t make you smart, much less wise. Using the latest buzzwords doesn’t make you an expert. And, just because you always adhere to the Modern Language Associate style doesn’t ensure your writings have any application outside the insular world of academic publishing.
Did you catch the change? Yes, I’m addressing you, the absurdly serious academic. The supporter of like-minded diversity and traditional rebelliousness. The defender of traditions you disdain.
When I mocked credential obsessed faculty, ridiculed academic jargon, and pointedly ignored academic styles, these and other attempts at dry wit were presented as evidence that my writing lacked seriousness.
Tangent. I like tangents.
I tell my students, seriously, that memorizing MLA or APA isn’t a good use of time. Use a handbook when you need or check trusted online style manuals. What you learn will be “wrong” in a few years. I know. I learned to cite via footnotes – a real pain when we typed papers on a Smith Corona portable typewriter. (Footnotes were no easier on my Brother electric.)
Now, back to my exorcism of academic demons.
I authored chapters appearing in three different academic texts. Several of my papers have been published in journal and conference proceedings. I co-edited an academic collection. Like most scholars, I needed to have supportive colleagues who appreciated my interests.
At the time of this aggressive “peer review” my ambition was to complete the Tameri Guide for Writers and The Existential Primer in my own self-deprecating and ironic way. The absurdity of my style seemed obvious: a guide for writers that argued against using guides; a philosophy text arguing against reading too much philosophy.
Stabbed with my own words, I retreated. I hoped to regroup after that skirmish and continue my fight against pointless norms.
It’s a joke, son. A joke, I say. Pick up the clue phone. It’s ringing for you.
I stopped work on The Existential Primer and Tameri Guide for Writers because the very attitudes I was mocking managed a near fatal blow to my desire to write. Both sites are neglected and pitiful, since I walked away. That will change.
Writing that I shouldn’t be taken too seriously… well, I never imagined someone would use phrases like that to prove I wasn’t serious. The most serious thinker to my mind was George Carlin, followed by a long list of stand-up comics and satirists who often told audiences and readers how little they knew.
Don’t trust someone shouting to you about his or her expertise. They don’t have anything but some credentials. They talk philosophy, but wouldn’t dare live a life according to their proclaimed ideals.
Academia is by nature hypocritical. It’s the place that supposedly values original thinking and experimentation, but quickly expels those who don’t fit within a rotting culture of elitism.
I stopped my work on two projects I considered valuable. I nearly took offline two projects that others had valued, including some individuals and organizations I respect. Instead of deleting everything, I left the website pages as they were, collecting virtual dust with minimal updates to the underlying templates.
Here I am, an individualist, a rebel, a rogue, who was psychically wounded by your claim that I could not and would not fit in with your tribe. I cared so much about being taken seriously, being considered a peer, that I gave you power over my well-being.
Yes, I see the irony in this. Trust me, I see how I wasted a decade trying to be admitted into your little cliquish circle of academic purity. I cannot help but mock the gatekeepers who are so busy keeping others out that they never appreciate what’s inside the walls.
I let your opinion of me matter. It will matter, to some degree, for the rest of my life, but at least I can mock it can call it what it is: insecurity. Bullies are insecure, and that includes academic bullies.
I am going to rewrite and update those two projects you ridiculed. I am going to take some action to reclaim what I thought were valuable applications of my time and energy. Since I’m never going to be one of you, there’s not much risk in being myself.
This post will reach thousands, or even tens of thousands. It won’t be set in 12-point type with one-inch margins. There are no citations. It’s choppy and fragmented. It won’t meet your formatting standards, which is a good thing. Your obsession with presentation is why too many students don’t enjoy learning.
Words are deeds, as I learned from you. What we write about others can and does effect lives.
How dare I mock a serious philosophy? Excuse me, but the better question is how can I resist some absurd humor targeting absurdism?
I am convinced Heidegger was making up half of what he wrote just to watch others try to make sense of it. Plus, I cannot think of Heidegger without imagining him as Colonel Klink. (Apologies to Werner Klemperer a decent man who was great in Hogan’s Heroes.)
My truth wasn’t going to be found in philosophy texts or religious scriptures. My truth comes from my youngest daughter, who reminds me that its okay to make up your own words when the existing ones won’t do.
She tells me to “Focentrate” on what I want to do and make it happen. “Sometimes, teachers don’t see what we know is true.”
My daughter also sees a pink sparkly dragon. The dragon tells her that teachers don’t always understand people like us. Teachers, she tells me, only see her fidgeting and rocking, struggling to sit still. They don’t see that she’s trying not to laugh at them during class.
It has taken a child to remind me that the adults in charge of education aren’t always wise or trustworthy.
That’s a pretty cool truth.
Recent Scholarly Publications
- Wyatt, Christopher Scott. (2019). “Virtual Dust on a Bookshelf: Abandoned Wikibooks by and for Writing Students.” Proceedings of Computers & Writing 2018. Website: https://wac.colostate.edu/resources/wac/proceedings/cw2018/
- Wyatt, Christopher Scott. (2019). “The Natural Accommodation of Interactive Fiction: How Text-Based Games Remove Barriers to Participation.” Proceedings of Computers & Writing 2018.
Website: https://wac.colostate.edu/resources/wac/proceedings/cw2018/ - Wyatt, Christopher Scott. (2018). On Type and Typographic Anatomy. In Christopher Scott Wyatt & Dànielle Nicole DeVoss (Eds.), Type Matters: The Rhetoricity of Letterforms (pp. 3-32). Anderson, SC: Parlor Press.
- Wyatt, Christopher Scott, & Dànielle Nicole DeVoss (Eds.) (2018). Type Matters: The Rhetoricity of Letterforms (Visual Rhetoric, Ed. Marguerite Helmers). Anderson, SC: Parlor Press. Website: http://www.parlorpress.com/typematters
- Wyatt, Christopher Scott. (2017). Accessible Writing Spaces: Designing Virtual Spaces that Accommodate Difference. In James Purdy & Dànielle Nicole DeVoss (Eds.), Making Space: Writing Instruction, Infrastructure, and Multiliteracies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative.
Website: https://www.press.umich.edu/7820727 (DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mpub.7820727)