The temerity to write! That we’re allowed to write, at our desks. On our computers. No: that we would even try to write. That we would even attempt to write, and not our suicide notes. Not lengthy apology letters. Not resignation letters.
That we turn on our computers at all. Open a document. That we should presume that we have something to say. That we have something to write. Which isn’t just an apology – and a lengthy apology. That isn’t just a listing of our sins and even our original sin: that we exist at all.
What excuse do we have? As if we were perfectly innocent … As if we didn’t know that what we wrote yesterday was a complete disaster and could only have been disastrous … And the same for what we wrote the day before! And what we wrote the day before that!
That we have not learnt: our ultimate sin. That we’ve learnt nothing. That experience teaches us nothing. That we persist. That we go on. In what optimism? With what hopes? How deeply we’re deceived!
We know our shortcomings, but we don’t know our shortcomings. We know how we fall short, but we don’t know how we fall short. We know our catastrophe, but we don’t know our catastrophe. We know our errancy, but we don’t know our errancy. We know our idiocy, yet we don’t know our idiocy. We know what we cannot do, but we do not know what we cannot do. Because we haven’t yet destroyed ourselves. Because we haven’t actually killed ourselves.
Alive! Still alive! The embarrassment. We’re sheepish about it. Embarrassed. It wasn’t supposed to end like this – i.e., never ending. It wasn’t supposed to be endless. We weren’t supposed to just live on forever.
The long afternoon of life. The forever afternoon. Continuation – day after day. Week after week. It amazes us. To find ourselves still awake, still alive. Going on – somehow. Surviving – somehow. Still at it – somehow.
And a whole university, supporting us in our delusion. The whole of academia, allowing us our fantasies. Driving us on. Not minding us. Tolerating us. Ignoring us, so long as we do the right administrative things. So long as we’re able to recruit. Our ship of fools. Our febrile band. Somehow, in the midst of all this, we’ve been allowed to get away with it.
We haven’t been closed down – not yet. We haven’t been ejected from the university – but how? We haven’t been forcibly expelled – why not? We haven’t been tarred and feathered and banished from the campus. We haven’t been excommunicated. We’ve been allowed to … be what we want to be. Do what we want to do. Within parameters, of course. Within a certain framework, true. But we’ve escaped scrutiny – until now.
We haven’t been any trouble. We’ve recruited. We’ve filled our lecture rooms. There’s a bumper crop of philosophy students graduates every year. With the highest grade! Perfectly happy with their degree! With their studies! Making no complaints! Raising no fuss!
We balance our budgets. We even make profit – a little. We haven’t been noticed, not really. We’ve ruffled no one’s feathers. We haven’t even been noticed, not really. We don’t speak at meetings. We create no fuss. We’re unobtrusive. We know the best thing is to keep quiet. Not to draw attention to ourselves. To simply get on with the job. And to be allowed to do what we do, without interference. Without scrutiny.
The auditors are happy with us. The quality assurance people. The internal audit people. And that’s what matters! And that’s what should matter to us!
My God, we were looking for jobs for years, and now we’ve found them. We were looking to be able to earn a living for years, and now we do. We want to Dream. We want to Drift. We want to Explore. To close our office doors and Imagine. To Contemplate where we’ve been and what we’ve done and what the future holds for us.
To ponder how we got here. To wonder at the turn our lives have taken. Here we are, in a city we don’t know. In a region unfamiliar to us. A part of England. The northeast! Infinitely mysterious. Who are we here? Who will we be? What turns will our life take? Where will we go? What will we do?
We’ve been given this chance – how not to squander this chance? To use this time. Not to get lost. Not to go off course. To make something of ourselves. To launch ourselves as thinkers. Because we have no excuse anymore.
Open ended contracts. The support of the uni. Hadn’t we always dreamed of this? Isn’t this what we always wanted? And what will we do with it? What will me make of ourselves? Will we be able to think for ourselves? With our own thoughts? With what we are? With who’ve we’ve been?
Our thinking … thoughts peculiar to us. Individual. That reflects the accidents of our lives. The contingencies. That we’ll lift up into Necessity.
Think of all the other poor fuckers out there without jobs. Think of them, scrabbling away, trying to make a living, surviving on benefits, handouts, couch-surfing, moving back in with their parents, trying to live from part time contract to part time contract, picking up teaching here and there. Wherever.
Taking on anything – any teaching job that pays. Brownnosing. Ingratiating themselves. Working themselves into this department or that. Making themselves indispensable. In the hope … in the hope that … what?
They’ll just hire some big name instead of you. They’ll just bring in someone with a proper education, instead of you. Who studied at Leuven, or something. Who’s like properly foreign, properly European, and is cultured like a proper European. Who has the manners of a proper European. Who dresses like a proper European. Who possesses wit like a proper European. Who reads everything in the original, like a proper European. Who can really carry off European thought, like a proper European.
But we got hired. We made it. We’re inside. And maybe inside forever. We better be inside forever. Because the last thing we’d ever want to be now is outside, scrabbling. Whoring for work. We’ve done our time. We’ve served our … apprenticeships …
Which is why we want to rest for awhile. Why we want to be quiet for a while. We want to be left alone for a while. We don’t want to have to sell ourselves for a while. We’re inside. We walk the corridors. We feel glad in the corridors. We’re happy as we cross the threshold into our building. As we walk up the steps towards our building.
We belong somewhere. We’re thirty-somethings, and now we can begin our lives. Now we can write things and publish things and partner up and reproduce. Now we’re eligible. Now we’re players. Now we’re not no ones. But things will be Expected of us. We’ll have to Deliver …
But not quite yet. Not now. Not for the moment. We can crawl under the figurative bedsheets for a while. To be left alone … Not to feel a threat existentially. Not to feel under fire. Not to feel a target on your back.
No more dole office. No more signing on. No more having to apply for seven jobs a week. No more back to work interviews. No more housing benefit applications. No more Explaining Ourselves. To peers. To parents. No longer having to make a case for ourselves.
We can catch up with our contemporaries. Buy somewhere. It’s cheap in the northeast. We’ll thrive in the northeast. Round out our lives. Learn to cook, or something. Go out into the countryside, or something. Join the ramblers, or something. Meet people from outside the bubble, or something. Meet people who are non academics, or something. Meet people who’d look up to us, or something.
Our lives can expand, but gently, gently. Life – ordinary life. We remember that. We have an idea of that. We won’t have to live in squalor. In rented rooms. We won’t have to live on discounted sandwiches. On bargain crap.
Relief – is that what we feel? Relief … a second life. Another go at life. Reborn, remade. Coming to ourselves. We might be able to become full human beings, at last.
We’re not just lost. We’re not just stranded. We’re not just forgotten. We’re not just out here forever. We’re not one of the Lost Boys and girls and non-binary people. We’re not leftovers. We’re not spares.
We’ve been Vindicated. It’s all Paid Off. It’s Led Somewhere. The Plan Worked. Was there a plan? Only the plan to escape the world. Only the plan to worm our way in. We’ve done it. Relief.
And who are we to be? Who will we be? Poor idiot lecturers, going from this enthusiasm to that. Publishing here and then there. Secondary stuff. Critical Guides to this or that. Editors of collections. Special editions. In some half arsed way. With no oeuvre in view. No row of books bearing your name. No Trajectory. No Denkweg. No path of reflection. Nothing carrying you forward. No build up. No thick book from Oxford University Press, or Stanford University Press.
These are the days. On the sixth floor, looking out. High over St Thomas Church. Over the war memorial. Over Barras Bridge. Over Haymarket. And the sky. We’re close to the sky. We can come and go as you please. Stay late. Stay all night. Sleep in your cupboard. Are we going to get lost in all this time? Think of Blumenberg and his card file of notes. Or was that Luhmann? Or was it both of them? Think of the massive oeuvre of Jacques Ellul.
Do we have anything to Say? Will we discover something to Say? Topics to explore. That are ours, only ours. A new Pressure. A gathering Pressure. What we will have to be. How we’ll lift ourselves up. How we’ll find Momentum. How we’ll be led from article to article and book to book. How we’ll write and sail away on an ocean current of writing.
Will we surprise ourselves. Will we surprise everyone. Now that we’ve been Given a Chance? We don’t know who’ll we’ll be. Is that our hope? Are those the grounds for our hope? Is that what our hope is?
Work in Progress 