We read ourselves into what we read. We read our desires into them. What we want. What we crave. What we’re desperate for. We can’t read literature, only Literature. We can’t read philosophy, only Philosophy. We don’t read books, only Books.
We want to be daunted. We want to feel disarmed. We want our reading to overpower us, to wrestle us down. We want our stupidity confirmed. We want only to deepen our inadequacy. To drive it down. We want only to confirm our inability to read.
Which is why reading is a death drive for us. We want books that refuse us. We don’t want to be able to read. We want to be illiterate. We want to lose our way in reading. We want to be lost. Daunted. Stunned into silence.
Defeat – that’s what we want. To sink down. To be brought down. Like wild elephants, stunned by sleep darts.
We don’t want to be allowed to run rampant. We don’t want to do what we want. We want to be defeated by greater and greater things.
Limits – that’s what we want. A sense of the forbidden. Of what is not for us. Of a way forever debarred. We want to be limited. To be reminded of our inability. Our incapacity.
We want a sign: No trespassers. We want to be forbidden to go forward. We want to be told off. Seen off the premises. Banished. We don’t want to be here.
There should be the book equivalents of game reserves. Where the wild books are allowed to wander about. To roam. Where they’re allowed to be themselves.
There should be book reserves, like nature reserves. Into which you cannot enter. Book wetlands. Book moorlands. Into which you can only look from afar. With the equivalent of binoculars.
Remote books: that’s what we want to see. European books, like a a fog shrouded mountain. We want not to belong in the country of European thought. We want to be guardians of difficulty, insistent on difficulty. Banners of translations. Of indexes. Of explanatory prefaces. Of secondary commentaries. Of idiot’s guides. Of paperbacks.
And us, patrolling the perimeter, denying access. That’s what all of our teaching should be: the denial of access. Above all to ourselves! We should banish ourselves! We shouldn’t be allowed to tread the sacred ground! It’s not for us! Any of it!
Let European philosophy rewild. Let it escape from commentary, from being lost in commentary, in books about books about books … Let it escape, European philosophy. Let it retreat back into itself. Let it be shy. Unextrovert. Hidden once again in the thickets of the continent.
Border police, that’s what we’ll be. Content to point at them from a distance, the great books. Content to let them wander in the wilderness, just as their authors intended. Allowed to be rare and strange again. Given back to their rarity.
Work in Progress 