The water of life.
That stuff …
The rumours … are they true?
I don’t get it – what’s the water of life?
Postgraduates are always in the line of apostolic succession. Take Fiver. He’s being supervised by Io. And Io was supervised by …?
Ron Flowers, at Essex.
The guy forced into retirement?
Fucked too many students or something …
And who supervised him?
Someone quiet famous, actually: Eloise Springer.
And who supervised her?
That’s going pretty far back. She was American. I think it was …
Hannah Arendt. It was Hannah Arendt.
Fuck off. Look it up.
Eloise Springer … supervised by Curt Broadstairs … supervised by HANNAH ARENDT. It’s fucking her!
See, a direct apostolic line to Hannah Arendt. To old Europe. Pretty fucking cool.
Well, the water of life is supposed to release the accumulated wisdom of the chain of supervisors. To let your supervisor and then your supervisor’s supervisor and so on, speak through you. All the way back.
And Hannah Ardent was supervised by Heidegger, right? I’d like to hear what the old Nazi has to say …
The water of life – if it actually exists – means that the postgraduate student becomes legion. Becomes multiple. The whole tradition speaks through them.
Has that ever happened before?
I never knew the water of life actually existed before. It was always only a postgraduate legend …
The water of life is about getting the whole chain of supervisors speaking through you. Going all the way back.
All the way back to where?
You can just go back and back. So if your supervisor was Prof Shithead back at the University of Shite, she might have been supervised by Prof Bellend from the University of Fuckery. So what? So what? Because Prof Bellend might have been supervised by someone good. Someone continental. Who might have supervised by someone at the Sorbonne. Who might have been supervised by Foucault himself. Or Deleuze. Or Laurelle – who knows?
Wow, so we could channel some French philosopher?
Theoretically.
So let’s try it.
Work in Progress 