Tractatus Logico-Pedagogicus

1 The discursive world is all that is the case.

1.1 The world of discourse is the totality of facts, not speakers.

1.11 Discourse constitutes facts.

1.111 Facts have no referent except as designated discursively.

1.112 Facts have no systemic coherence except as organized discursively.

1.113 A "nondiscursive fact" would be like a "nonroyal king."

1.12 Facts constitute discourse.

1.121 Discourse has no substance except in facts.

1.122 Discourse has no extension except in facts.

1.123 Discourse has no instantiation except in facts.

1.124 A "nonfactual discourse" would be like a "nonbureaucratic administration."

1.2 "Being the case" is an exclusively discursive property of facts.

1.21 There are no facts such that "being the case" would not be a defining property of them.

1.22 There is no discourse such that "the case" would not be a property of the facts definitively constituted by it.

1.23 There is no "case" such that definition would not constitute it as the property of its discursive facts.

1.24 There is no property such that discourse would not fax it the defining constituents of its case.

1.25 There is no being such that constituting would not curse the property of the discasive defining.

1.26 There is no constitution such that Case wouldn't define the discourse of factuality as his property.

1.27 Enough. Or too much. Move on, please.

1.28 No, not here--back up to the next higher level.

1.3 Thank you.

1.31 "Thank you" is not a proposition. Get on with it.

1.32 It is an implicit proposition, of the type "Thank(s are due to) you."

1.311 1.32 is improperly subordinated to 1.3.

1.321 1.311 isn't subordinated to 1.32 at all.

1.312 Hierarchical logic is no place to have a debate.

1.322 Is too.

1.313 Is not.

1.323 Is too.

1.33 Will you two stop that!

1.314 Another country heard from.

1.324 Yeah, butt out, 33. This is our argument.

1.331 You two aren't even proceeding in logical sequence, damn your eyes!

1.315 Look who's talking.

1.325 Yeah, math nose. Take a hike.

1.4 Speakers enter the discursive world only as the articulatory vehicles of facts.

1.41 Facts require the articulatory powers of speakers in order to find expression.

1.411 I didn't even know it was lost.

1.412 Sort of like a lost lamb, huh? Until a fact gets a speaker to help it find it.

1.413 Which is not to say that speakers are the messiah.

1.414 If anything is, facts are.

1.415 Speakers are like the eyes that seek and the legs that walk of the fact in search of expression.

1.416 Go easier on the metaphors, dudes. This here's logic we're doin.

1.42 What is significant in the speech of a speaker is its propositional content.

1.421 Not the speaker's motivations.

1.4211 Speaker psychology is right out.

1.422 Nor the impact of the speech on a listener.

1.4221 Ditto listener psychology.

1.423 And propositional content means logical hierarchies.

1.332 Yeah, you geeks, not dialogue.

1.316 Bugger off, you putrid little shit. You make me ill.

1.5 Do I have to come back there and paddle you kids?

1.317 No.

1.326 No.

1.333 No.

2 Good.

2.1 Hey, goddammit, now look what you made me do! I've wasted 2!

2.11 Nothing's ever wasted.

2.12 I was wasted last night, man. Almost OD'd on directalis. What a linear trip, point A to point B, whew!

2.13 That's not what I meant.

2.14 Only one meaning per customer, sir.

3 The propositional content of academic discourse constitutes its producer as professor and its consumers as students.

3.1 Academic discourse is a natural emanation out of its originary core, which is propositional factuality.

3.11 Academic discourse is never originated by its users (speakers-producers or listeners-consumers).

3.111 Academic discourse has no human beginning or end.

3.112 Academic discourse is transcendent in origins and thus timeless and universal.

3.113 Academic discourse is itself the alpha and the omega of its human users' academic thought.

3.114 Speakers and listeners become producers and consumers of academic discourse by internalizing its core of propositional factuality.

3.12 There is a natural emanative correspondence between the formal structures of academic discourse and the propositional factuality out of which it arises.

3.121 Formal linguistic analysis is a reliable techne for tracing academic discourse back to its factual origins.

3.1211 Hence linguists are priests.

3.1212 Mumbo jumbo, heap big trumbo, oobooboo!

3.1213 Just watch it man, see 'cause:

3.122 The impersonal quality of academic discourse is a reliable indicator of the impersonality of propositional factuality.

3.1221 Depersonalization of any proposition will inevitably move it in the direction of increased factuality.

3.1222 Regimentation of academic discourse users will inevitably move their utterances in the direction of increased factuality.

3.13 There is a natural emanative correspondence between the dignified, orotund tone of academic discourse and the sublime vastness of the universe.

3.14 There is a natural emanative correspondence between the mathematical logic of academic discourse and the rational deep structure of the universe.

3.14159(...) For example, pi.

3.2 Users of academic discourse are first constituted as its consumers, called students. Pharmaceutically assisted pedagogies and aversion therapies (isolation, humiliation, peer pressure) are an invaluable part of this process.

3.21 The essential regimentation and depersonalization of academic discourse requires that its users first be conditioned to passive, submissive reception.

3.211 Obedience-inducing drugs indicated: authoritotropin, obedioflavin and placidoflavin bromides, and trihexypapamine.

3.212 Aversion therapies: ridicule, sarcasm for disobedience.

3.22 The regimen of logic requires that academic discourse users be conditioned to linear, dualistic, and hierarchical thinking.

3.221 Logic-inducing drugs indicated: cerebrophenamide X, lineazolamide, xeroclonodase solution.

3.222 Aversion therapies: point-by-point public analyses of fallacious and muddled reasoning.

3.23 The regimen of avoidance requires that academic discourse users be conditioned to the repression of inappropriate behaviors.

3.231 Repression-inducing drugs indicated: directalis, phenobloomdehyde, phenohirschedrine, phenomumital, reprobamate, and sterile gluteculturide suspension.

3.232 Aversion therapies: peer pressure; snubbing for (a) emotional and personal thinking, (b) contextual and connective thinking, (c) deviant tonalizations, and (d) attachment to inappropriate cultural expressions.

3.3 Academic discourse users are secondarily and selectively constituted as its producers in a hierarchical sequence moving from student writers/presenters through teaching assistants and instructors to professors.

3.31 The longer the training in the production of academic discourse, the higher the rung occupied on the pedagogical hierarchy.

3.311 A bachelor's degree and admission to a graduate program entitles the student to train lower-level undergraduate students in the production of academic discourse.

3.312 Completion of doctoral course-work and exams entitles the student to train upper-level undergraduate students in the production of academic discourse.

3.313 Completion of the doctoral degree constitutes the student as professor and entitles him/her to train students at all levels in the production of academic discourse.

3.22 The higher the rung occupied, the greater the responsibility for training academic discourse consumers as producers.

3.321 Greater responsibility in this task entitles the academic discourse producer to higher status, salary, and related perquisites, especially when evidenced in such pedagogical achievements as publication with prestigious presses and journals.

3.322 This responsibility is in indirect proportion to the academic discourse producer's teaching load.

3.3221 The more you teach, the less responsibility you have for the training of students in the production of academic discourse, and thus the less status and salary.

3.3222 The less you teach, the more pedagogical responsibility you bear and hence the greater institutional rewards you reap.

3.3223 No contradiction here, folks.

3.32231 No denialozide either. Not a drop, I swear.

3.32232 It ain't scientific to swear.

3.32233 It ain't scientific to say ain't.

3.32234 You don't watch yourself you ain't gonna have no mouth to say ain't with you suckpoop.

3.32235 I'm gonna tell, mommy's gonna wash your mouth out with soap, you said (poop).

3.32236 You said it too!

3.32237 Did not, ha ha ha ha! It was in parentheses, fooled ya zitface!

3.4 Here, you too, take one of these each.

3.41 What is it?

3.42 Never you mind, just take one.

3.43 What is it? Here, see, I'm taking it, now what is it?

3.44 Lineazolamide, 30 mg tab. I'm gonna train you two to think logically if it's the last thing I do.

4 Hierarchical behaviors in the classroom are controlled by the factuality of propositions uttered.

4.1 A proposition is not factual because it is spoken by a professor; it is spoken by a professor because it is factual.

4.11 The professor's insecure need to be the only source of truth in the classroom is irrelevant to the determination of factuality.

4.111 The professor's personal insecurity is irrelevant to the factuality of 4.11.

4.1111 The fact that the writer of 4.111 is a professor is irrelevant to its factuality.

4.11111 The denial of relevance in 4.11, 4.111, and 4.1111 is irrelevant to their factuality.

4.111111 The fact that this is a potentially infinite regress is irrelevant to the factuality of any proposition in the string.

4.112 Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

4.113 And forget all about that cur behind the mountain. Put it right out of mind.

4.12 The professor's suppression of student voices in the classroom is irrelevant to the determination of factuality.

4.121 A professor is not right because students sit quietly listening to the factual propositions s/he utters in class.

4.122 Social power has no effect in the determination of propositional factuality.

4.123 Does too.

4.124 Shut up!

4.125 Sorry. (pig dog professor)

4.126 One more word and you're out of here. I'm warning you . . .

4.127

4.128 That's better.

4.2 A proposition is not factual because it is submissively internalized by students; it is submissively internalized by students because it is factual.

4.21 The student's insecure need to be told the right answer is irrelevant to the determination of factuality.

4.211 The student's insecurity is irrelevant to the factuality of 4.21.

4.2111 Oh puh-leeeze, let's not start that again.

4.212 The student's belief that a proposition is the "right answer" is irrelevant to the determination of factuality.

4.2121 The student's insecure need to project his/her desire to be told the right answer onto the proposition is irrelevant to the determination of factuality.

4.21211 I mean it. No more infinite regresses. They are damaging to the propositional validity of this tract.

4.212111 Damage to a tract's propositional validity is irrelevant to the determination of its factuality.

4.2121111 Like hell! That ruins everything!

4.21211111 Not if we don't tell anybody.

4.212111111 Stupid gork! 3.21211 already let the fuckin cat outta the bag!

4.2121111111 Whether the fuckin cat is in or out of the bag is irrelevant to the determination of factuality.

4.212111112 So what you're saying, basically, is that nothing matters--?

4.21211112 Except factuality.

4.2121112 Except factuality.

4.212112 Except factuality.

4.21212 Except factuality.

4.2122 Except factuality.

4.2123 Yes. Deny everything. Except fac--

4.213 Urp!

4.22 Student resistance to a professorial proposition does not invalidate its factuality.

4.221 The factuality of a proposition is perfectly impervious to a student's doubts.

4.222 The factuality of a proposition is perfectly impervious to a student's anger.

4.223 The factuality of a proposition is perfectly impervious to a student's crying.

4.224 The factuality of a proposition is perfectly impervious to a student's critical thinking.

4.225 The factuality of a proposition is perfectly impervious to a student's casuistry.

4.226 The factuality of a proposition is perfectly impervious to a student's parody.

4.227 The factuality of a proposition is perfectly impervious to a student's daydreaming.

4.228 The factuality of a proposition is perfectly impervious to a student's personal experience.

4.229 The factuality of a proposition is perfectly impervious to a student's indifference.

4.23 The factuality of a proposition is never contingent upon the drugs the student is taking (prescribed or illegal, academic or extracurricular).

4.231 The presence of denialozide in the blood stream of a student in a state of submissive openness with regard to a proposition is never relevant to its factuality.

4.2312 In fact, the student on denialozide might as well never have been there, for all it matters to propositional factuality.

4.2313 Nor is it entirely insignificant that the student on denialozide might not be completely unwilling to deny categorically having been present to hear the proposition in question.

4.2314 Not that it is in question.

4.2315 It's just a phrase, you ninny. It doesn't mean the proposition's being challenged, god forbid. It means "under consideration," "the one I'm talking about."

4.23151 The fact that you're talking about it is irrelevant to a determination of its factuality.

4.23152 Yeah? What about you, then? You just talked about it too, and don't try to deny it.

4.23153 Talk is irrelevant. Consideration is irrelevant. Gimme a break, man. Why should I try to deny what's already irrelevant?

4.232 Cerebrophenamide X and lineazolamide aid in the perception of factuality. They do not constitute it.

4.2321 The fact that the writer of 4.232 was flying on lineazolamide when he wrote it is irrelevant to a determination of its factuality.

4.2322 Nor does it make the slightest difference for any of this that he is a big-time abuser of denialozide.

4.23221 Mainly because he isn't.

4.23222 And wouldn't admit it if he were.

4.23223 Besides, he can quit any time he wants.

4.23224 But why should he? It doesn't hurt anybody.

4.23225 But himself.

4.23226 No way!

4.23227 Way!

4.23228 Touch me and you die, man--

4.23229 All right, that's enough, you two, break it up and move on.

5 Professors can never justifiably be charged with suppressing students' divergent readings (SDRs) of a text.

5.1 Professors are perfectly justified in expecting students' readings of texts to converge with their own.

5.11 The professor's correct reading (PCR) is correct not because it is uttered by the professor but because it is perfectly subordinated to the transcendental voice of truth.

5.12 Students' readings become correct when they are subordinated to the PCR; not because the professor uttered it but because it is perfectly subordinated to the transcendental voice of truth.

5.13 SDRs are a priori false because they diverge from the PCR, and thus from transcendental truth.

5.131 Because a divergent reading can only be correct if it doesn't diverge, a "correct SDR" is a contradiction in terms.

5.132 SDRs are properly suppressed not by the professor (who is the only vehicle of truth), but by their own logical impossibility.

5.133 Professors are in the clear; safe; whew!

5.2 Professors are perfectly justified in expecting students to recognize and affirm the naturalness of this state of affairs.

5.21 The hierarchical channeling of truth through professors to students is an integral part of academic discourse.

5.22 Any student who questions this hierarchy is questioning the very ground on which the academic institution rests.

5.23 To question the ground on which the academic institution rests is to question one's own status in that institution.

5.24 To question one's own status in the institution is to remove all a priori justification for one's presence in the institution and right to accrue those benefits due a university student.

5.25 Without the a priori justification that comes from willing subordination to the truth as channeled through professors, a student is not in the strictest sense of the word a proper student at all.

5.26 Because a student who offers a divergent reading is no student, an SDR is a contradiction in terms.

5.27 Professors teach students; they do not teach nonstudents.

5.271 Professors do not teach truck drivers.

5.2711 A truck driver who is legally enrolled in a university is, from the university's (and thus also the professor's) point of view, not a truck driver but a student.

5.2712 A professor who enrolls in a truck-driving school is not a professor, but a student, who should be expected to internalize the lessons taught by the teacher of truck-driving students.

5.2713 A professor who hitches a ride in a truck driven by one of his/her students and offers some traffic pointers during the trip is not a professor teaching a student but a concerned citizen doing his/her civic duty in maintaining highway safety.

5.2714 A professor who is accidentally hit on the head while leaning precariously over a freeway overpass and tumbles headlong into the trailer of a passing semi is not a professor but a somewhat unfortunate stowaway in a rapidly moving vehicle taking him/her far far away from his/her domicile and loved ones.

5.2715 A professor who staggers out of a truck stop bar drunk and takes a piss against the sturdy tire of a semi and is roughly beaten by the burly truck driver who observed the urination from his vantage point inside the truck stop and rushed out to protect his truck from the ammoniac bath is not a professor but a bruised and semiconscious drunk lying in a dark oily puddle somewhere in the middle of a vast parking lot surrounded by the shadowy shapes of massive trucks and trailers.

5.2716 A professor who--

5.27161 All right, all right, that's plenty. Get back on track.

5.272 A professor does not teach weasels.

5.273 A professor does not teach marmosets.

5.274 A professor does not teach mosquito larvae.

5.275 A professor does not teach coelacanths.

5.276 A professor does not teach milkweed tussock moth caterpillars.

5.277 A professor does not teach molten lava pools.

5.278 That's not what I meant, shit-for-brains! Back to the next higher level!

5.28 A student offering an SDR is not a person a professor is expected to teach.

5.281 Exactly. Now concentrate on your work. Eliminate excess.

5.282 But sir, please, sir, aren't your interruptions excess? F-f-f-from a purely logical point of view, I mean.

5.283 Well, technically, yes; however, it is excess necessitated by the initial excess incurred through your failure to employ Occam's razor on the construction of your argument, thus strictly speaking part and parcel of your excess and not even indirectly, by any stretch of the institutional imagination, my fault. Besides, who is to say that I interrupted you in the first place? That is in fact primarily your interpretation of what happened; perhaps there were no interruptions; perhaps you invented that thematization in order to diminish my person in the eyes of the reader. After all, what reason would I have to interrupt this tract and introduce extralogical excess into what should by rights be a slim and trim machine? Ultimately, it seems clear, it never happened, I wasn't there, and it wasn't the way it appears.

5.29 A professor who refuses to listen to an SDR is not suppressing that SDR, but merely fulfilling his/her duties as a professor.

5.3 A professor is perfectly justified in expecting students to accept his/her claim to be open to SDRs in principle and thus not an authoritarian teacher.

5.31 It is essential that the professor maintain the position that an SDR might channel the truth more perfectly than his/her PCR--however unlikely such an eventually by definition always is.

5.311 The professor is, after all, only human, and subject to unfortunate lapses.

5.3111 The professor could come to class during the onset of nausea and diarrhea, and feel disoriented due to physical distress.

5.3112 The professor could come to class desperately hung over from riotous drunken partying the previous evening, or bruised and battered from an unfortunate incident with a truck driver in a parking lot.

5.3113 The professor could come to class high on directalis and be unable to finish a sentence.

5.3114 The professor could receive a sharp blow on the head while entering class and suffer temporary amnesia.

5.3115 The professor could get his/her clothing caught in instructional machinery and be distracted from the proper conduct of the class.

5.3116 The professor could suffer a lot of other lapses as well.

5.3117 Though of course it would be infinitely preferable for the professor subject to such lapses not to come to class.

5.3118 Lest students view the professor's momentary weakness and draw unfortunate conclusions therefrom.

5.312 It is in rare cases possible for a student to pull rank on a professor.

5.3121 If the class is reading a poem about sheet metal and the professor is not and never has been a sheet metal worker, it is possible that a student in the class whose parents were both sheet metal workers and aunts and uncles and cousins were all sheet metal workers and who her/himself has worked with sheet metal every summer since junior high school might possess sufficient knowledge to challenge the PCR on some tiny otherwise insignificant poetic detail regarding sheet metal.

5.31211 Though of course it should go without saying that the student is not a sheet metal worker while in class but a student, and specifically a student of poetry, in which the professor is an expert, so that it would be unreasonable to expect knowledge of sheet metal to validate an entire SDR of a poem dealing with sheet metal.

5.31212 Besides, given its intrinsic nature, how important could sheet metal imagery be to a poem anyway?

5.3122 There are rare cases in which a senior professor's son or daughter takes a class from the father's or mother's junior colleague and is able to channel the parent's superior subordination to truth in class in such a way as to challenge the PCR of the professor, who is probably still rather inexperienced and uncertain of him/herself pedagogically and possibly also still under the unfortunate influence of theoretical and/or methodological innovations learned in graduate school.

5.31221 Even so, the junior professor best proves him/herself worthy of his/her senior colleague's esteem by correcting the student gently but firmly and so salvaging his/her authority intact.

5.32 It is essential that the professor categorically deny any charges of authoritarianism and insist on his/her openness in principle to the "rightness" of SDRs, by deferring the moment of actual conversion by an SDR.

5.321 It is possible to defer the moment of conversion spatiotemporally, into a different time or place.

5.3211 It is possible to defer the moment of conversion temporally.

5.32111 It is possible to defer the moment of conversion into the past.

5.321111 The professor has been converted by SDR (many times).

5.321112 S/he can't name any actual cases of SDR conversion, off hand, but knows that s/he must have experienced them.

5.32112 It is possible to defer the moment of conversion into the future.

5.321121 The professor knows s/he is capable of being converted by SDR.

5.321122 It will probably (almost certainly) happen in the future; the possibility cannot be ruled out absolutely.

5.32112 The key is the ability to say (and believe) that the problem isn't general, it's with this specific SDR.

5.321121 It's not that the professor refuses generally to be converted by SDR; it's that s/he is unmoved by this particular SDR.

5.321122 The professor's rejection of SDR(s) is thus restricted to an infinitely repeated present moment.

5.3212 It is possible to defer the moment of conversion spatially.

5.32121 It is possible to defer the moment of conversion to any place other than the classroom.

5.321211 It is possible to defer the moment of conversion to the professor's home.

5.3212111 The professor resists conversion to an SDR in the seminar room, but is converted while going about his/her nonacademic life at home.

5.3212112 It is a sort of after-effect or delayed reaction to the SDR.

5.3212113 It strikes like lightning and the PCR is changed forever.

5.3212114 The earlier PCR is as if it had never been.

5.3212115 The PCR is always the PCR and thus the truth.

5.321212 It is possible to defer the moment of conversion to a quiet stall in the faculty restroom.

5.321213 It is possible to defer the moment of conversion to the shade of the professor's favorite elm tree on campus.

5.321214 It is possible to defer the moment of conversion to the last lap in the mile the professor swims every other day without fail in the university pool.

5.321215 It is possible to defer the moment of conversion to a chair in the police station where the professor has gone to lodge a complaint against a truck driver for physically assaulting him/her with no provocation in the parking lot of a nearby truck stop.

5.3213 By means of spatiotemporal deferrals the professor is able to protect the vulnerability of the moment of SDR conversion from the eyes of students, who might draw unfortunate conclusions therefrom.

5.32131 Having converted, it is possible to move on next class period to the next text.

5.32132 This enables the professor not to teach the "conversion text" in the converted way, along the lines of the SDR, until the next year, when none of his/her students will know that the (new) PCR was partially shaped by an SDR.

5.32133 Even if the professor actually goes into class next class period and announces that s/he has been thinking about the SDR from last class and decided that there was something to it, the student may be right, it is possible for him/her to salvage his/her authority intact.

5.32134 After all, divorced from the original discussion it isn't the SDR that has converted the professor; it is his/her own private thought processes.

5.32135 The professor converted him/herself, in response to the SDR.

5.321351 The SDR really didn't effect the conversion, but was merely its occasion.

5.3213511 As a bee sting may be the occasion of a professor falling on his/her ass, but one would not be inclined to say that the bee pushed the professor over.

5.3213512 As an overdose of cerebrophenamide X might age a professor prematurely and thus indirectly cause the professor to take early retirement, but one would not be inclined to say that the professor was drummed out of the department by a chemical compound.

5.3213513 As a hornet buzzing around a professor's head while s/he is at stool might cause him/her to run bareassed into the street, but one would not be inclined to say that--

5.3213514 I think that will do nicely, thank you. Move on.

5.321352 Well, the main thing is that the student didn't convert the professor; the professor was converted by truth, which chose, momentarily and quite inexplicably, to work through the medium of a student.

5.3213521 As God spoke to Moses through a burning bush, which is not to say that the burning bush was greater than Moses, or that--

5.3213522 Stop already.

5.3213523 Sorry.

5.322 It is possible to defer the moment of conversion repressively, into the unconscious.

5.3221 This deferral enables the professor to profess a vague sense of having repressed conversion experiences.

5.3222 This in turn enables the professor to insist on having been converted by students without being able to remember a single case of such conversion.

5.32221 Which of course neatly obviates the demand that the professor be able to produce a single student who could corroborate his/her claim.

5.3223 By repressing SDR conversion experiences, the professor can repress both flexibility and inflexibility.

5.32231 A professor who is flexible is uncertain, ill-prepared, poorly qualified for the job, and most likely personally insecure.

5.32232 A professor who is inflexible is excessively authoritarian out of a desire to persuade students through his/her personal or institutional power rather than through the potent forces of truth and sweet reason.

5.32233 A professor who can effectively deny both thereby raises him/herself above mere petty flexibility and inflexibility to the sublime level of channeling truth.

5.322331 Effective denial requires implicit faith in the stance that displaces the denied behavior.

5.3223311 Effective denial requires the ability to pass a polygraph test on one's faith.

5.3223312 Fortunately, denialozide is a potent agent in the inculcation of repressive beliefs that can convince the polygraph that one is telling the truth.

5.322332 Even more fortunately, repressive denial is an implicit and therefore persuasive faith in the stance that displaces the denied behavior.

5.4 It is essential that professors be able to deny effectively the charge that they are addicted to PCRs and habit-forming drugs like denialozide.

5.41 There are three responses to the charge of PCR addiction.

5.411 One may insist that one is not addicted, one is simply right.

5.4111 This is the institutionally approved response.

5.4112 Department chairs do well to take a faculty member's willingness to give it to students into consideration in tenure and promotion decisions.

5.412 One may insist that one is not addicted, nor is one (necessarily) right.

5.4121 This response is less subversive than it may at first appear, and thus to be recommended to all (especially younger and more politically correct) professors who are quite rightly concerned about the impression their authority makes on students.

5.41211 By denying one's conviction that one is (necessarily) right, one is not in fact denying one's access to transcendental truth.

5.412111 "I'm not necessarily always right" challenges not the professor's subordination to truth, but the professor's personal authority in the determination of truth.

5.412112 It is perfectly possible to deny one's own infallibility and still unswervingly channel transcendental truth.

5.41212 By denying one's conviction that one is (necessarily) right, one is not in fact implying that one is ever wrong.

5.412121 The moment at which one might have to admit to being wrong is capable of being infinitely deferred, both spatiotemporally and repressively, as in 5.3, above.

5.412122 Thus one maintains the impression of being simultaneously always right and rather nice about it.

5.412123 It helps, though, to modulate one's tone of voice carefully; it is relatively easy to sound defensive in protesting charges of infallibility.

5.413 The third response is to admit and bemoan one's PCR addiction but throw up one's hands in desperation and plead inability to change.

5.4131 A professor willing to make damaging admissions of this sort is seriously unfit for academic work and should be denied or deprived of tenure at all costs.

5.4132 Entrance into a twelve-step program for PCR addiction is doubly damaging, both to the professor's pedagogical effectiveness and to the department and the university as a whole.

5.41321 What so-called twelve-step "healing" is attempting to "heal" is the intrinsic nature of academic discourse, or everything that is the case.

5.41322 Professors who join such programs are instantly eligible for disability pensions.

5.42 There are likewise three responses to the charge of denying PCR addiction.

5.421 One may protest, when confronted by pointed analyses of "typical" PCR addicts' typical behavior, that one isn't like that.

5.4212 Nor has one ever had an English professor who was.

5.42121 Such descriptions may be true of professors of political science, or biology, or some such scientific discipline, but not of English professors.

5.42122 And shame on scurrilous rumor-mongers among one's colleagues who claim to know what goes on in classrooms they have never actually observed.

5.422 One may protest, when confronted by pointed analyses of one's own addictive behavior, that it is dangerous to generalize from a specific occurrence to larger patterns.

5.4221 Refusing to accept this particular SDR does not make one hostile to SDRs in general.

5.4222 The fact that this time one thought one was right does not mean one is always right, and thus addicted to PCRs.

5.42221 Nor does it mean that the drug even exists.

5.42222 Or denialozide either.

5.42223 After all, what proof does anyone have that PCR and denialozide and the rest are not the fanciful inventions of some disgruntled antiacademic professor and a disaffected D.A. student who together out of whatever perverse impulse (probably high on real drugs) concocted high-falutin scientific names and acronyms for things that don't exist and never have and never will and then made wild-eyed accusations of addictions to those "drugs" among decent hard-working academics who have never used drugs, except legal over-the-counter drugs like aspirin and Tylenol and iron supplements and No-Doz and prescription drugs like Valium and Quaaludes and codeine and Hydrocortizone and harmful but still legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco and maybe smoked a few joints in college (but that was a long time ago (and they didn't inhale (and they sincerely regret it now (though not without a little harmless nostalgia)))).

5.42224 I ask you: what proof does anyone have?

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Copyright 1992 Doug Robinson and Bill Kaul