A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 
Cornell Gets Rhetoric Superstar Judith Butler for $10M, Trades Culler

In the high stakes world of recruiting academic superstars, Team Cornell has demonstrated that it is no slouch. Today, the University announced that it had hired top tier Berkeley Feminist/Rhetorician, Judith Butler, to a seven year contract worth a record $10M a year. Butler, author of Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth Century France, Excitable Speech: Politics of the Performative and the trailblazing Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Gender , and most recently Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, created a sensation when she first began exploring "the partial opacity of the subject, and the relation between critique and ethical reflection."

Jonathan Culler, who was traded in the deal, and whose wife is half sister to the comedian Chevy Chase will head up Berkeley's new critical studies department. In a press conference this morning Academic dean, Robert Wakowski, called Butler a "titan of theory and a first rate addition to our all-star Rhetoric squad," and went on to say that "I've known Jon Culler for 20 years and I'm sure he'll make a real contribution at UC Berkeley."

Meanwhile, rumors abound that Cornell is negotiating with Argentinian Marxist humanist Ernesto Laclau and the controversial Slovenian born Slavo Zizek, the so-called bad boy of Continental Philosophy to head a new institute of social theory. Zizek's total compensation last year for teaching and guest lectures is reported to have maxed out at $7.4 million. Not surprising, however, because, as pundits have pointed out, Zizek's ontology posits a return to the category of the Cartesian subject; a return to the category of ideology; and a return to the notion of the Lacanian Real.

Any academic package combining Laclau and Zizek would put Cornell up among the top three post structuralist "powerhouses" in the world, according to Theory Today editor Bob Shortlist.

Inspired by the recent series of spectacular trades and contract buyouts on the university circuit, a small publishing company in Ithaca has announced that it will bring out a series of collectible academic superstar trading cards which will include perennials like Harold Bloom and all time mega-favorite, Lionel Trilling. . The first cards will begin to come out in the Fall of 2008.


Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 3:46 AM