Why have they turned their attentions on us? Why is it our turn? Why philosophy? Why couldn’t they just have left us alone? Why couldn’t we be allowed to exist untroubled and unharassed? Why should we have to be destroyed and remade? It’s cruel … it’s needless.
Come on – of course it isn’t needless. It isn’t just philosophy’s turn. A special punishment is being meted out to us. A special, tailor-made humiliation. They’re declared war on Philosophy – of course. It is Philosophy that has to be wrestled to the ground, and that first of all.
Can they do this sort of thing? Without consultation? Is it allowed?
Apparently.
Puzzlement: who’s behind it? Whose idea has this? The Dean of the Sciences? The Dean of Arts? The uni President himself? Is there, like, a rationale for the move? Have they explained themselves?
They don’t have to explain themselves. They just act.
It makes no sense …
Of course it makes no sense. That’s the point …
It’s mockery – in plain view. They’re laughing at us. It’s a deliberate humiliation.
Is it only us they’re moving? Are they going to join up English and mech eng?
Only us.
That’s cruel … singling us out, because they know we’re weak … There are only five of us, for fuck's sake.
They’re trying to trap us. To make us resign … To lower our morale … To decrease our recruitment. They know we can’t last …
Those bastards!
This never would have happened in the old days.
In the old days, we’d never have got jobs. Not at this kind of uni.
True.
Look, It’s just some random thing. Some stupidity. Some manager or another wanted to make their stamp on the uni. Some idiot …
… They’re all idiots.
Philosophy … Organisational Management. Someone’s done it as a joke. It’s a joke told to someone else. Someone’s laughing …
No one’s laughing. The horror is that they mean it.
What are the Organisational Management types like? What do they want from us? What’s in it for them?
Our student numbers, maybe.
Laughter.
Our reputation.
Laughter.
Fuck … this is INSANE.
It’s all insane. The world’s insane. These are careening times. These are train-jumps-the-track-lines times. There’s never been this degree of arrant madness. Obvious madness. I swear it’s accelerating. I swear it’s intensifying.
Whatever next? English moved to Marine Engineering? History to Chemical engineering? Classics to Chemical Engineering? Don’t they see how mad this is?
It’s because they sense something about Philosophy. They feel a kind of awe of Philosophy, despite everything. They know that it’s Philosophy they have to go after. Not history, say. Not the fine arts. Not music. Not English literature. No, it’s Philosophy – it must be Philosophy. Philosophy must be made to do their bidding.
Yeah – to warn the rest of the humanities that this could happen to them. That no one’s safe in the humanities. That no subject can hide … The uni’s coming for you: that’s what the Organisational Management move is showing. Never think you’re safe! Never think you’re hidden! If we can do it to Philosophy, we can do it to you …
The uni can do what it likes: that’s what this says. That’s the message being sent out. Don’t wail that it’s an injustice. The university’s the arbiter of justice. Don’t cry out that it makes no sense. The university decides what makes sense. This is a shock and awe move. This is a cow-the-humanities move. This is a we-have-infinite-power move. This is a we-can-do-anything-we-like move. This is a kneel-and-pray move. This is a behold-our-greatness move. This is a watch–it–or–you’re–next move.
Imagining the meeting where they made the decision. Imagining the negotiations. Was it discussed? Did they weigh up the pros and the cons? Did they all just agree? Were there dissenters? Was anyone against it? Couldn’t they sense the nihilism – even if they’d never heard of the word, nihilism?
They did it because of the nihilism – an unconscious nihilism, but nihilism nonetheless. They did it because of the absurdity. There’s a whole institutional unconscious at work. The university’s in the grip of deep, deep drives. A desire for revenge. On humanities expansiveness. On humanities freedom of thought.
They know us as a threat – unconsciously. They experience us as an enemy – in the backs of their minds. This is an unconscious revenge on Philosophy. On the humanities in general. They’re doing not just because they can, but because they have to. Because this is their eschatological role at the end of times: the mockers of the humanities and especially philosophy.
And it has to be Organisational Management. They had to move us to Organisational Management. The least applied, most theoretical of humanities disciplines moved to the most applied, least theoretical science subjects: of course.
Why would Organisational Management want us, anyway?
Curiosity. A bit of novelty. Organisational managers need a little chaos in their otherwise orderly lives. They need a project.
Is that what we are?
Sure – something to organise. And to manage. Something challenging.
Are we a challenge – really?
Of course. We’re a test. We’re unknown, our kind. They want some novelty. It’s like a cat with a mouse. They want to play with us before they kill it. Is it fun, playing. Fun for them.
I see it as a deliberate experiment. They’re seeing whether they can change us. From within. Cell by cell. They’re going to make us into good Organisational Managers. They’re going to show they can manage the unmanageable. The question is, who put them up to it?
Who did put them up to it?
This is part of something larger. Something global. Something civilizational.
Could be Davos types. Could be World Economic Forum types. Could be the Bank of International Settlements …
Come on, why would they bother with a Philosophy department?
It’s part of the clear-and-hold op. That’s what they’re up to. Wiping out little pockets of resistance in the uni.
Look, these guys are in charge of the entire planet. There’s no external enemy. So they’re just going through their occupied territory, trying to enforce ideological uniformity.
I think it’s a yin and yang thing. There has to be disorganisation somewhere, even in Organisational Management. Otherwise, there’d be noting to organise. There has to be the un-fucking-manageable. Without us, there’d be nothing to manage.
We’re going to be the secret madness of Organisational Management. We’re going to be the madness at Organisational Management’s heart. Organisational Management’s own caged beast, born of caged fucking beasts …
Isn’t it possible – just possible – that someone actually thought this was a good idea? That someone was trying to create a dynamic new synergy. A new model for humanities / sciences collaboration.
Fuck that. The Organisational Management move is clearly a ritual sacrifice of philosophy – that’s the only way we can make sense of it. it’s a deliberate offering up of philosophy to its very strange gods.
It’d be almost a tribute to us that they’d bother. That they’d think it worthwhile taking out a potential enemy.
Maybe they sense something missing in Organisational Management. A kind of philosophical phantom limb. A dull ache. They want more. They Desire. They Yearn. In their own way. In an Organisational Management way.
What does Organisational Management yearning look like? They’d like to be more than they are. They’re all about logistics. And order. They’re all about procedures. They want something else. They’re not sure what they want, but they think it might be us.
This merger … This mind meld … Do they want to tame us, or untame themselves? Do they want to tie us up or loosen themselves? Is it about a becoming-Organisational-Management of Philosophy, or a becoming-Philosophy-of-Organisational-Management?
The mystical marriage of Philosophy and Organisational Management. The marriage of heaven and hell, right?
Opposites attract, maybe.
Opposites repel!
It might destroy the universe, you know. Like matter and anti-matter. Because Philosophy is anti-Organisational Management, just as Organisational Management is anti-Philosophy. At opposite poles. Bring them together and you risk tearing the universe apart.
Unless this is just what Philosophy needs. Unless this is what will force Philosophy to, like, become itself. Into pure internal resistance. Crowded into itself. Shoved into itself. Crammed into the tiniest space. And Philosophy, under immense pressure, will become something else. Will change into another state, like solid turning into liquid.
Philosophy, under this kind of pressure, will turn molten. Melt.
Imagining it: magma-philosophy. Lava-philosophy, reading to erupt, madly. Ready to burst, exploding all philosophical sanity. Turning us all into mad geniuses.
You wish! They’re only moving us because Cicero’s gone. They had some respect for Cicero. This … travesty wouldn’t have happened on her watch. I mean, everyone had respect for Cicero. Her, like, chutzpah. Her canniness. Her politicking. And she had the credentials, right? She had the CV. She’d brought in millions in research money.
And she wasn’t just going to cruise to retirement, was she? She had a plan, right? Who else would plan to open a Philosophy department when the university had closed one so emphatically only a few years earlier? How had she created an entirely new philosophy programme of study when the university had shown itself to be utterly allergic to philosophy not so long ago?
How had she done it, when the higher-ups couldn’t even speak about the trauma of closing the old philosophy department? When the memories of the old philosophy clearly made upper and lower management cringe?
But she did it. Cicero did it. Cicero outmanoeuvred the enemy. Cicero boxed very fucking clever. Cicero went the back-door route. Cicero drew upon old allies. Secret connections. She called in some favours. She’d done things for people, and now she wanted things done in return.
How was it possible? But it was possible. A Philosophy department. Philosophy, born again at Newcastle! Philosophy, alive again oh! Philosophy, rising, phoenix-like. Blazing into the sky. And European philosophy, too. The only kind of philosophy that counted for Cicero …
So there we were, Cicero’s secret enclave. Cicero’s pocket of resistance. Cicero’s foxhole, of sorts. A new European philosophy department, at a time when they were closing European philosophy departments. How long were we going to last, once Cicero had gone?
Why did she go?: that’s the question.
We probably disappointed her.
I don’t think we did. She used to listen to us lecture outside the lecture hall. She’d listen in the foyer.
She liked our pathos. Our perspective … The English working class perspective. Real people perspective, she said.
All I remember is Cicero calling us libtards.
That was to train us. To get us used to adversity.
She criticised my shoes. She said they weren’t smart enough.
That was part of the training. She thought you wouldn’t take yourself seriously without proper shoes. Look, you’re wearing them now. Fucking brogues.
And she had a special love for you, Shiva. The way she always kept you back for further instruction. You were, like, her chosen successor. Selected for special attention. As the chosen one. As the future leader. To whom everything was going to be entrusted. [Underleader?]
She made you – you – her successor. She made you Head of Department. What the fuck was that about? Are you ever suspicious, Shiva?
About what?
I mean … come on …
She appointed you, too, Driss. And you, Barbarossa. Fuck – do you remember what you were like when you got here? Fucking nuts …
Remembering. Cicero recruited us. Cicero plucked us from our provincial universities. Cicero, doing the conferences. Cicero, asking questions: Who should she employ? Who are the best? The brightest? And avoiding the most obviously bright. The most obviously best.
Cicero, showing up at obscure symposia at obscure universities, keeping her eye out. But for what? The put-upon. The cornered. The prospectless. Those who didn’t belong. Ones who had been defeated – spiritually. The desperate – because she thought she could shape something from our desperation. The working class – because she thought she could make something of our working-class-ness. The all but down-and-out.
Our lowly beginnings. Our lack of credentials. The fact that we’d essentially birthed ourselves. That we’d formed ourselves out of nothing. That we’d conjured ourselves from our reading. That we’d emerged from the corners and cracks, from provincial England. From rooms in obscure places.
Our lives of non adventure, non importance. Our lives, in which we’d never travelled. Didn’t know the great capitals of Europe. Had no idea about far flung parts of the world.
Our narrowness! The fact that we’d experienced so little. That we were so uncultured. That we could converse on such a narrow range of subjects. That we were so ungrounded – intellectually, culturally. That we’d sprung out of nowhere; emerged all at once.
Cicero knew the kind of people we were. Without … dimensions. Without breadth. Who’d been isolated. Lost, even. She knew who’d she plucked from obscurity, bringing obscurity with them. She knew we were people of the everyday – people of the outside. From the boondocks, from the provinces. From hidden corners. From cracks and crevices.
Cicero knew we were people from without. Who were part of nothing. Who’d each resigned themselves to a life of futility, a life for nothing, a life out of step, a life untimely, a life outside, a life in the shadows, a life in irrelevance, a life stranded, a life friendless, a life in isolation, a life locked away …
We were Jude-the-Obscures; Thomas-the-Obscures. We surrounded ourselves with books, in the provinces. Buried ourselves with books, in our cracks, in our crevices. By authors no one around us had heard of. Thinkers from forgotten times, irrelevant times.
What we sought in philosophy! The way we invested philosophy with our hopes! With our lives! With our Desire, greater than anything! Only those with empty lives could expect so much from philosophy.
Did Cicero romanticise the working class (us)? No doubt. Did she have great philosophical hopes for the disenfranchised (us)? Of course.
You need philosophy more than I do: she said that once. And what you want from philosophy is greater, too. The way we looked upwards at philosophy – that impressed Cicero. The way we held philosophy above everything. As drowning people look upwards to be saved.
Would-be thinkers are the best thinkers, Cicero said. Thinkers who do not presume they think. For whom thinking itself is a problem, and never straightforward. Thinkers who make a problem of philosophy – of what philosophy is. Of what thought is.
Thought was a matter of life and death to us: Cicero could see that. Philosophy was a question of being able to live. Of not being ashamed of having lived a life. Of not being ashamed of having been human.
A chance: that’s what philosophy was to us. To redeem ourselves. To lift ourselves up. To burn upwards in thought. To offer our lives to something greater.
Our burning hearts. Our burning brains. Our burning eyes. Cicero loved our ardency. Our blazing. Wasn’t that what academia, in its entirety, lacked? Wasn’t that what was missing? We could set the university on fire. Simply burn it up. And wasn’t that what Cicero would like to see?
And we came to Newcastle, full of a desperate intensity! A life-or-death intensity! A desperation! A craving! We came, still in some manic state. After years of living in extremity. After years of part-time teaching. Grinning strangely. Our eyes … The look in our eyes … We were all but frothing at the mouth …
You, too, Barbarossa.
Yes, says Barbarossa. Me, too.
Cicero swept us up in her angel’s wings, we agree. We were saved, lifted, when we didn’t expect to be. We’d escaped, when we never expected to escape …
Unless …, X begins.
Unless what?
Unless Cicero foresaw what was going to happen.
The Organisational Management move?
Unless she staged the whole thing. Putting together a Philosophy department – a European Philosophy department. Now! At the end of history. And the end of times. At the end of everything. The end will bring a carnival of madness, that’s what Cicero knew. And she wanted to contribute to the parade. She want to cultivate … deformities and mutations. Sports. Twistings. Human contortionists. Not physical ones – mental ones. She wanted a veritable freakshow. Like in that Hieronymous Bosch painting. But a freakshow in thought.
Cicero wanted to found a philosophical department for the end of times. When philosophy could only appear in parody, as an inversion of what it was. So she brought us in – we idiots. Cicero wasn’t fooled by our mediocrity – not for a moment. By our triviality. By the pettiness of our concerns. No one should have recruited us – of course not. No one should have brought us here – that’s obvious. Because our role was to be laughable. Was to play our role in parody. A farcical role.
Cicero cast us – us. And who else could she have cast but us? We’re here to do parody philosophy. To busy ourselves with philosophy as farce. And the final move: was the Organisational Management move. The Organisational Management consummation. The completion of the farce. The consummation of the nonsense. Which she unleashed in the first place! Which she set in motion! We’re a joke – don’t you see? Cicero’s joke. Cicero’s last joke.
No – I don’t believe it.
You wouldn’t, Shiva. Cicero was just an impresario of the farce: that’s the truth of it. She knew what philosophy is in this world. The only thing philosophy can be in this world. So she staged the whole thing. She set up a department. Recruited the stupid. Hell, she probably even sold us out to Organisational Management. She probably set up the whole move.
No!
And she made you – you – her successor. She’s made you head of department. A parody head. A headless head. It’s beautiful. What could be more beautiful? She’s probably laughing right now …
Fuck you.
It’s sublime. It’s marvellous. It’s genius in some random way.
It’s not genius, it’s madness.
Work in Progress 