Sham Philosopher

I don’t believe you’re a sham. No one thinks you’re a sham. My husband doesn’t.

He couldn’t tell the difference.

So what are you going to do, Dr Sham? Kill yourself?

I’m not even going to kill myself. I’m not even going to do anything. I’m just going to live and live and live.

As a sham?

As a sham.

Don’t you think all your favourite philosophers thought they were shams?

Yes, but they weren’t shams.

They must have thought they were shams, though, right? I reckon they’d be telling someone like me on a night something like this that they were shams, wouldn’t they?

 

I like you, philosopher. I like that you’re so … self-deprecating. And torn. And despairing. My poor despairing philosopher … My poor, lost philosopher …

Now you’re being patronising.

My poor sensitive philosopher. Too good for the world …

You’re laughing at me. Which is good – I need laughing at.

 

I’m sham. I don’t speak any of the languages, for one thing. And I haven’t even been to Paris or Berlin or any of those places. I’m a provincial.

Have you been to Amsterdam – on the ferry? You can sail directly there from the Port of Tyne. Takes 12 hours or so. Maybe we should escape to Amsterdam, philosopher.

 

So we’ve brought a sham Philosophy unit into Organisational Management.

You have.

And I’m giving a sham philosopher a tour of the Apex …

You are.

 

We’re living on the fumes of philosophy. We’re flies living on the corpse of philosophy. All we do is write secondary commentary.

 

Black humour is humour that knows the world can’t be fixed. It’s apocalyptic, not ameliorative.

I like that word: ameliorative. I like the opposition you made. Nice and alliterative. It sounds very clever, though it might just be pretentious. Something you’ve thought about. And written about, probably … Of course, the thing I want to know is whether I’m apocalyptic enough for you, philosopher. Am I dead enough?

 

You’ll have everyone here persuaded that you’re a philosopher. You look the part. We’ll all be very impressed. You’ll walk by, and we’ll think, There goes the philosopher.

Fuck off.

We won’t know any better. We wouldn’t know a philosopher from … a velociraptor. We can’t judge. We’re only Organisational managers … We only know Organisational Management, nothing else … You’ll be a philosophy exotic. A humanities exotic! We’ll look upon you with wonder.

Fuck off some more.

 

You’re very pessimistic, I can tell. You think you’re defeated – your kind. You think your kind are finished. The humanities kind. The philosophy kind. The in-love-with-Old-Europe kind. You think you’re a dying breed. And perhaps you’re right.

Except that I don’t think I belong to it: the dying breed. I think I’m only keeping the memory of a breed who’ve already died out. Who’ve already disappeared. What they wanted to belong to, what they want to think was a dream then, and now it’s a dream of a dream. It’s all forgotten.

All your mourning, philosopher. Your relationship to the past. Endlessly playing the Last Post … It’s all mourning, and nothing new. Whereas this is all new – the campus is new. Organisational Management is new.