The reading for my PhD
In “English” was all “Theory:”
First was Karl Marx’s view that culture
Arises as mere superstructure
Above the economic base;
While Sigmund Freud has second place
For showing art is mere libido
Artfully concealed by ego;
And Friedrich Nietzsche, finally,
Destroyed the “truth” of history,
Preferring myths that make you strong—
How could that (un)belief be wrong?

Much later, this Germanic trio
Inspired three French savants to follow:
Meaning, Jacques Derrida averred,
Is always differed (slash) deferred.
All texts are supplements, said he
All are self-contradictory.
So every textual production
Performs its own self-deconstruction,
And nothing is outside the text.

Roland Barthes killed off the author next,
And then went on to write S/Z
To demonstrate how readers read.
The pleasure of the text? He lost it
In multi-levelled semiotics
That made the text unreaderly.
So jouissance eluded me:
Each line of Balzac’s Sarrasine
Had ten of comment in between!

Michel Foucault cried, Man is dead!
We now have discourses instead.
He then continued to astonish
His fans with Discipline and Punish
Culture is carceral, said he,
A gaol of discursivity,
Though how it got to be that way
Was not his discipline to say.
He’s just an archeologist
(Perhaps a genealogist)
Who never writes mere history.

These six discursive sites combined
Within my Anglo-Saxon mind:
Now I can see “identity”
Is merely sexuality,
Traversed by textuality,
Controlled by the hegemony
Of bourgeois ideology.
The apparatus of the State
Interpellates my mental state.
Consciousness is determined, but
Texts are all indeterminate.
Desire and power negotiate
Together as they circulate.
I celebrate hybridity,
Difference and diversity,
Not individuality.

I earned my “English” doctorate
And joined the professoriate.
I am advancing my career
(Promotion should occur next year),
By blaming Western metaphysics
(Avoiding most of the specifics),
Attacking Orientalism,
And bourgeois Liberal Humanism,
And the Western university,
Although it’s generous to me--
Travel grants for conferences,
Allowances and full expenses,
Merit increments, pay rises,
Research awards and teaching prizes!
Theory keeps the students quiet:
Choose your theory and apply it
To any text: canonical
Or popular, colonial,
Post-colonial, post-modernist:
Literature cannot resist,
Surrendering without conditions
To the hermeneutic of suspicion.
Thanks to theory, I have it all:
Professor—but still radical!