Monday Read with a Side of Irony

An English professor writes a treatise on why english departments are such snakepits.  It's actually an entertaining piece.  I'm hoping that this piece isn't subscription only; if it is, here are a couple of pertinent excerpts:

"Perhaps we initiate and perpetuate interdepartmental fights in order to keep boredom at bay. Not that we do that consciously or calculatingly, but at some unrecognized level, aren't we itching for intensity? Tenured for life, we perhaps need the drama of conflict to inject the thrill of spontaneous emotion and extreme passion into our stable and predictable existences. Conflict might be our unacknowledged antidote for ennui.

"It might also be a cure for inconsequentiality. As a humanist, I am regularly asked to justify my seemingly arcane pursuits. And here's where conflict comes in handy. If academics as a group are fundamentally uncertain about the value of their activities, then fighting tooth and nail over the specifics of those activities implicitly attests to their value. Anger offers us a palpable form of validation. If we can get so worked up about our policies and practices that we are willing to scream at one another, then those policies and practices must be important and world altering, right?"

It continues in this vein.  Again, an entertaining article, partly because of the unintentional humor provided by an english professor taking 20 paragraphs to say "the battles are so fierce because the stakes are so low."  Hee.