News: they’re moving the Philosophy department into Organisational Management.
General shock. Can they do this sort of thing? Without consultation? Is it allowed?
Apparently.
Walking at the coast.
Is there a rationale? we wonder. Have they explained themselves?
They don’t have to explain themselves, Hans says. They just act.
But it’s so absurd! It makes no sense …, Ava says.
Of course it makes no sense, Hans says. That’s the point …
It’s mockery–in plain view, Magellan says. They’re laughing at us.
It’s self-mockery, I say. The uni’s laughing at itself … At everything a university once was …
But do they really know what they’re doing? Magellan asks. Can’t they sense the nihilism–even if they’ve never heard the word, nihilism?
They did it because of the nihilism, I say. It’s to deepen the nihilism.
It’s just some random thing, Ava says. Some stupidity. Some manager or another wanted to make their stamp on the uni. Some idiot–
–They’re all idiots–, Hans says.
–Had some interdisciplinary initiative, or something, Ava says. Wanted to shake things up …
What about Organisational Management? Hans asks. What’s in it for them?
Our student numbers, maybe, I say.
Laughter.
Our international reputation, Magellan says.
Laughter.
Our general sanity and well-adjustedness, Ava says.
More laughter.
Why couldn’t they just have left us alone? Ava asks. Why couldn’t we be allowed to go on as we were? It’s cruel … it’s needless.
Because they’ve declared war on philosophy, Magellan says. They know that it’s philosophy they have to go after. Not history! Not the fine arts! Not music! Not English literature! But philosophy, alone among the humanities …
It’s because they sense something about philosophy, Magellan says. They feel a kind of awe of philosophy, despite everything. They know us as a threat–unconsciously. They experience us as an enemy, in some recess of their minds.
It’s a matter of unavowed revenge on philosophy, Magellan says. On the humanities in general. There’s a whole institutional unconscious at work. A desire for revenge. On humanities expansiveness. On humanities freedom of thought …
And that’s why the closure of philosophy would never be enough, Magellan says. The humiliation of philosophy: that’s the aim.
This is a shock and awe move, Hans says. This is a cow-the-humanities move. This is a watch it or you’re next move.
It’s a show of power–of utter power, Hans says. It’s like parking a tank on your front law. It’s to prove that they can do exactly as they please, no matter how mad. That they can simply bend reality to their will.
The uni can do what it likes: that’s what this says, Hans says. Anything could happen! The greatest absurdity! Who would be crazy enough to move philosophy to organisational management? The uni would! Because the uni can!
The madness of the world is showing itself, I say. The madness behind the world. A deluge of madness! A mad flood of insanity! It’s quite sublime in its way …
Don’t examine it too closely, Magellan says. Don’t think about it too much. Ponder the logic of the organisational management move and you’ll go mad, too.
Maybe we should go mad, I say. Maybe that's what it'll take. But it has to be our madness, not theirs–not the madness they want to drive us to. Not the madness of humiliation, but … but our cultivate-your-own-legitimate-madness madness, like Cicero used to say. Which is to say, the madness of philosophy – real philosophy.
*
If only Cicero were still with us.
Cicero, our erstwhile organ grinder! Cicero, the old head of the Philosophy Department … Cicero, who handpicked us–us–to work here … Cicero, who plucked us–us–from our provincial universities … Cicero, who scouted the conferences for … what? Not the up-and-coming, we were never that … The desperate! The put-upon! The cornered!: That’s who we were …
Cicero sought out the prospectless! The defeated–spiritually! Financially! Psychologically! Cicero looked for the lower class! The skint! The disturbed! The personality-disordered! Who’d never normally be given a lectureship at a Russell Group university! Us, in other words.
Cicero actually wanted our kind around her. The end times will see a parade of deformities and grotesques, she used to say. Mental deformities, not physical ones. Mental sports! The psychically twisted! The cognitively contorted! The equivalent of Hieronymous Bosch’s Hell, but in thought …
Only thought-freaks could philosophise from the end times, Cicero said. Only thinkers of deformity could think out of the experience of the coming collapse. Which was quite impossible for Cicero herself, with her European education, with her deep philosophical culture, with dozens of keynote speeches behind her, with decades of immersion in the great works of philosophy.
She wanted to surround herself with the genuinely doomed. The authentically prospectless. She wanted Hopelessness in person. Philosophical wreckage. She wanted to be the captain of a ship of fools, and she got her wish. We were to be the doom speakers of the end times. We were to voice disgust’s disgust. Horror’s horror. We were to voice the truth of our times: the mad truth. Which is why Cicero brought us here. Why she combed the conferences to find our kind. She summoned us to Newcastle to let us be ourselves in thought.
I wouldn’t say that, exactly, Ava says. She could be pretty insulting …
But it was a kind insulting, Magellan says. It was meant to spur us on.
It was meant to crush us–, Ava says.
It was, like, a Jedi training, I say. She was our Yoda. She wanted to deepen our sense of disgust. To rise from our ashes. It was a use-the-force-Luke kinda thing.
–I’m still crushed–, Ava says.
Philosophers you must be! Magellan says, in his best Yoda voice. Think for yourselves, you must!
It was a bootcamp, I say. She wanted to toughen us up. Particular you, Hans. She could tell you were a soy boy.
And then Cicero … disappeared. She went travelling or whatever. Took her career break.
Do you think that was a coincidence? I ask.
She was tired, we remember. I can’t do this by myself, she’d say. I can’t keep Philosophy open … For years, I’ve done nothing but struggle! To keep the course open! To recruit you and the others!
How she drank! She emptied whole bars! And we emptied them with her! There was a whole discipline of drinking, we remember. We had to watch over our nights of drinking. Less they slip into complacency. Less they fall into pubism. Drinking mustn’t be consolation, Cicero always said. Mustn’t allow our reconciliation to the way things are.
The pub is not a place for petty moaning! Cicero said. For sharing grudges. There was to be no huddling together to share our problems. No crying into our beer. No whisky lamentations about the state of our lives.
Never a retreat to the pub, but an attempt to escape through it. The pub as launchpad … As space capsule … We were looking to flare upwards. To burn up.
And yet: Cicero’s sadness, in the face of the attacks of the university. Cicero’s defeat, in battling the university. Even as she insisted that adversity helped her. Even as she said that that’s where her best thoughts were coming from. How else would she have been able to develop her insights into political ponerology, except from dastardly academic ruses? Into psychic warfare techniques and conditioning tactics, except from her tussles with the deans? How else would she have been able to diagnose the determinative value of the technological system–of systematisation, schematisation, tabulation, qualification, rationalisation, mechanisation, standardisation–were it not for her experience of being continually crushed by the system?
The way Cicero used to speak about escape, as we drank … About the significance of the exodic act! About the effort to snatch a little transcendence from the day. About not being buried with her defeats. About rolling away her stone. About resurrection! About wanting a last chance to redeem her sufferings!
There we were, drinking at Jilly’s with Cicero. Affirming our right to assembly, at Jilly’s. Our right to drunken assembly. Jilly’s, where we’d drink ourselves out of the lowlands. Out of the valleys. Jilly’s, where we reached, with Cicero, a promontory of drinking. Where we’d discuss the big picture and the very picture.
Things, it is true, would devolve into chaos. Hans, invariably taking his trousers off. Ava and Magellan, singing duets. Me, lying on the sofa. everyone at the bar, in the final hours, doing shots together. Even Klaus the barman. Especially him! Klaus, pulling out his guitar. All of us at the bar, singing Roy Orbison’s Crying. And all of us crying, tears running down our drunken cheeks …
But Cicero enjoyed the spectacle. Hans, loudly demanding DISCO! Music he could DANCE TO! Magellan, regressing to childhood. Ava, doing a solo Rhinestone Cowboy. Great work with the microphone stand. Me, in some drunken half-fight about who would win in a fight: Gnostics or nihilists …
Cicero, seemingly happy in her cups as we were happy in ours. Cicero, like us, in the last redoubt, taking a last drunken stand. Against what? Against technics! Against nihilism! Against managerial evil! Against the all-seeing eye, never sleeping, always watchful! Against technocracy!
But Cicero resigned her post. She handed in her notice. Cicero turned Philosophy over to us. She gave the leadership to me. Cicero set off travelling. Who knows where. Who knows how (a lottery win? An inheritance?) …
And the Organisational Management move, as soon as Cicero left. As soon as there was no one of calibre to take the uni on …
Work in Progress 