Traitors

The Organisation Management building.

Through the corridors.

This building reads us, apparently. Like, our minds. Or our moods. It’s supposed to respond to us, detecting when we’re stressed. Changing the lighting. And spraying stuff into the air. Hormones, or something … Have you heard of sick building syndrome? This is the opposite of that. This is a health-promoting building. It actually makes you healthier.

What about your husband: won’t he be wondering where you went?

He won’t have noticed.

I’ll bet he has.

He’s preparing to give his speech – there’ll be a welcome Philosophy speech, you know … Actually, that’s why we’re leaving. I don’t like his speeches.

Won’t he mind?

I … do … my … own … thing. He knows that. He’s used to me disappearing. Wouldn’t you love to be married to me? I make everything … unpredictable.

Upstairs.

I like wandering around the building at night. Wandering past the offices. I like the open space. I like the darkness.

They’re all curved, these corridors …

Getting lost can be productive. Wandering is part of thinking.

Even business thinking?

All thinking, philosopher.

The infinite ranks of Organisational Management offices … All the Organisational Management that must get done here …

These are the offices of the up-and-coming. Young, thrusting types. Really going places.

Upstairs.

And this is superstar row. These are the big name professors. The big guns, from Penn State and Harvard and so on. The Organisational Management elite … Busy keynoting and publishing in the big ten journals … They have, like personal administrators. And superstar offices.

Upstairs.

In there, the hospitality suite. I don’t have access. For entertaining the grandees from government and business. We have everything ready in case Bill Gates flies in …

Upstairs.

And here we are: the Pulse, a bit of a work on progress. Our version of a holodeck – or it’s going to be. There’s, like, an AI that can create virtual landscapes.

Now I actually do have access to this. It’s my baby, this …

Laure, twiddling a dial. The Pulse will put you anywhere you want in the world. That’s the plan, anyway. We have virtual world developers who work on this stuff … It can actually turn into a disco. Watch.

A disco ball, descending. Laser beams, flashing …

And there are gaming options as well … Great for team building. I’ll bet you just love team building …

I’ll set it to temperate woodlands. All green and leafy. Pretty convincing, isn’t it?

We won’t be able to visit nature anymore – that’s the plan. It’s going to be closed off. Rewilded. Kept just for billionaires. We’ll just have the metaverse version. Which is what you have right here …

So paranoid.

Upstairs.

And here’s the common room. Which you guys will be welcome to use.

A noticeboard. Quotations in colour, at jaunty angles. Reading:  Planting seeds of kindness. Kindness is Contagious … Pass It On. A spider diagram. Arrows between compassion, empathy, kindness and equity.

They’re from our away-day. Some brainstorming thing about the things we value as a business community, supposedly … You’ve got a lot to look forward to. You haven’t lived until you experience an Organisational Management awayday …

An animated poster. Positive organisations are developed through the creation of: a positive climate; positive relations; positive communication and positive meaning, including an emphasis on compassion, forgiveness and gratitude among employees.

A framed photo of the Dalai Lama. No one can agree on the word, compassion, but we agree on kindness. No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

It’s kindness week. Or kindness month. Or kindness season. Actually, I think it’s permanent kindness now.

Journals, on the rack. Critical Management Studies. Bulletin of the Centre for Compassion and Altruism Research (CCARE).

Flicking through Journal of Global Social Responsibility in Business. The tagline: Facilitating discussion among business stakeholders on issues related to local social responsibility and sustainability. Snappy. Inclusive Capitalism: Making Capitalism more Equitable, Sustainable and Inclusive … Greater Good in Action: Sharing research practices for fostering happiness, resilience, kindness and connection …

See, we not all horrible capitalists, you know. Even corporations are, like, anti capitalist now.

You can look down on us all you like … But there’s nothing terribly terrible about Organisational Management. Nothing awfully awful … I know some of this kindness stuff is kind of cringe, but you can really do things here. Effect, like, change. We have the ear of politicians … NGO types … This is the way the world is going.

I mean why should the moving of Philosophy into Organisational Management be, like, the end of the entire universe? We’re a broad church.

It's a hostile takeover of Philosophy, and that’s that.

Not so hostile. It isn’t exactly the Gulag Archipelago.

Sure, because they’re smarter than that now. They don’t have to be so obvious with their total domination.

Who are they, anyway?

You don’t think Organisational Management is being played by greater forces?

Possibly.

You don’t think there’s something Vaster going on, capital V?

Maybe. I don’t know.

This is not just about the way the world’s going. None of this is happening by chance. There are people steering this.

People … mysterious people …

I thought you said you were the madwoman in the Organisational Management attic.

Maybe I am … maybe I’m not …

Like, what percentage of you is Organisational Manager?

About … thirty-two … twenty-seven … nineteen … I don’t know. The point is that it won’t actually be that bad being part of this. Everyone’s actually manageable, once you find the levers.

You didn’t just say that …

Management doesn’t mean all the horrendous top-down stuff. Models of leadership have come a long way. Alan, for example, thinks of himself as more of a facilitator. As an underleader. He leads from below, very humbly.

Oh God.

Why do you have to be so cynical?

You’d like to think you’re totally unique, totally uncontrollable, totally … I don’t know, anarchist, but you’re not. Face it. You’re not some terrible threat. You’ll fit right in.

I thought you wanted some anarchy.

I don’t know whether I actually believe in anarchy.

And what about madness? And being dead?

You’ve already been screened. You’re safe.

I’m not – safe.

Do you seriously think you’re a challenge for Organisational Management? Don’t you think we’ll just swallow you up, for all your so-called unmanageability?

That’s your agenda: swallowing us up. You’ve said it.

It’s about interdisciplinarity. We want to reduce Organisational Management groupthink. We want … cognitive diversity, not just demographic diversity. We want to question everything … our basic beliefs. That’s the only way we can address global problems.

God …

Don’t you believe there are global problems?

I don’t believe you can manage your way out of them. Management’s the problem.

Some models of management, maybe … But we’ve moved on from those.

You say you want … dialogue. To reduce groupthink. But what if someone questioned the need for Organisational Management? What if we said Organisational Management shouldn’t exist at all?

That’s allowed.

What if someone said Organisational Management was evil – the greatest evil?

Everything’s open to discussion.  

Everything – which means nothing. Everything’s allowed, which means nothing’s allowed … What is Organisational Management, anyway? When did it start? How did it get that name? Why wasn’t it even heard of before, say, five years ago?

Business studies just sounded too … business-y. Organisational Management was a better name for what we were about. But I think we might abandon that, in turn. Just call ourselves Sustainable Futures or something …

God … God …

Maybe you’ll turn us all philosophical, whatever that means. All subject-areas become philosophical, as they mature, my husband says. Every subject, that once split off from philosophy, returns to it in its moment of deepest need. In its deepest questioning. Which is why there’s a philosophy of maths and a philosophy of physics.

Of course

A philosophy of … literature … And art …

Art’s all about philosophy.

So why not a philosophy of business studies? Why can’t Organisational Management become question-worthy, or whatever?

Because it would destroy Organisational Management. The question of Organisational Management would swallow it whole ..

Maybe it should be destroyed … Maybe we’re too much … Maybe our campus is too big … Maybe we’ve become too powerful … And we don’t ask about fundamental things. You see, I feel these things too, philosopher. I want to … rebel, or whatever. Maybe I don’t know how. Maybe that’s what I’m doing now: rebelling by walking through the building with you.

There are supposed to be philosophers in Business Studies. Pragmatic ones, who went where the money was. Who got Business Studies scholarships to fund their PhDs. Smart move, now that humanities PhD funding has dried up. And who found themselves Business Studies or Organisational Management jobs … Which allow them to hide in plain sight …

There are probably some amongst you, leading secret philosophical lives. Recognising each other by secret handshakes. Nodding in the corridors. Occasionally meeting in secret for philosophy reading groups. You could be one of them …

I’d know if I was one of them.

Maybe they caught you and brain-wiped you. Reprogrammed you, like an Organisational Management version of Jason Bourne. But maybe you’re still part of a secret philosophy sleeper cell. You just need to hear the right trigger word.

So what’s the right trigger word?

I don’t know … Wittgenstein?

Doesn’t do anything to me.

Heidegger? The good beyond being?

Nope … nothing.

Upstairs.

This is the Dome. It’s, like, a contemplation space.

Are those lava lights?

Sure. They’re supposed to be restful.

They’re changing colour.

They’re responding to you. This is an interactive environment. They’re trying to calm you down – do you see?

I don’t want to be calm.

They’re trying to slow your heartbeat. Calm your breathing.

Reading: A space for contemplation. An area that has no purpose. A whatever space. A spatial remnant. Pure potentiality. For whatever use we want to make of it.

Alan’s idea.

I can’t believe you guys are taking over contemplation. And purposelessness.

Why, does philosophy own it?

Laure: how did you get that name, anyway? Are you French?

Half French.

You know who the original Laure was, don’t you?

Was there an original?

She was the mad girlfriend of Georges Bataille. Have you heard of him?

I … might have.

He was a mad philosopher. And she wrote deranged poetry and mad essays. And died terribly young.

Is he your hero, Georges Bataille?

You pronounce it beautifully.

I studied Business Studies with French, philosopher. Imagine that. I spent a year abroad in Paris.

I’ve never been. I’m desperately provincial.

And proud of it, I’ll bet.

The lights on the wall, changing.

I don’t believe anything you said about Organisational Management

Nor did I.

Life, for Georges Bataille and Laure was a breaking of forms. A breaking with nature, the laws of nature. A breakout from prison – from the natural prison. From the order of this world.

Is that true?

Life, for them, was about the unmanageable. About becoming … un-organisable. About contamination. The mixing of things that shouldn’t mix. General defilement. The dissolution of natural boundaries, limits.

It’s about revolution.

You humanities types still believe in that?

In … apocalypse. The destruction of the present order of things. When chaos is unleashed. When a kind of lightning strikes.

Do you think we’d survive the apocalypse, you and I?

I think we’d go right down with the world.

But would we rise again?

There’s a desire in us to … destroy. To twist. To invert. And it’s a desire for truth. A desire to … stop lying. To stop … mocking meaning.

Organisational Management’s destroying meaning – it’s quite deliberate. It’s a … nihilism factory. It’s sucking all the meaning out of the world. The better to organise it. The better to manage it. But it will perish by what it creates. It’s perishing now.

This building … this tower … Is already dead. It’s a shell. This whole campus … It’s the void – nothing else. In the real night, beyond the fake one … In the real darkness … there’s just Meaninglessness, because all meaning is exhausted. Chaos, because all ordering has failed. That’s what lying in wait, behind the fake sky …

But we in Philosophy have special powers. And that’s why we bear the alien fire. We can make meaning from meaninglessness. That’s our magic. We live against the world – against your world. Against any word …

In a world that’s gone dark, meaning withdraws. You can find it only in the questioning of meaning – of what’s called meaning … And there’s meaning in that – do you see?

What does meaning mean, anyway? I’m confused …

You know what it means. You know it because you demand it. You shake the bars of the world, crying out for it. And crying out for it makes the prison no longer seem so bad.

The questioning of meaning … What does that mean?

It means this world isn’t enough for us. That we’re dissatisfied with the world itself … When the world becomes a purely functional mechanism, the conditions of meaning come from outside. Our despair – our crying out – doesn’t even come from us. It comes from outside – out there. In the night of the world.

Outside – outside what?

Outside this tower. Outside this campus. Outside Organisational Management. Meaning’s transcendent or not at all. Meaning arrives from without – only from without. That’s how it is now. Meaning is not given in the order of things. It’s given in the destruction of that order. In its sacrifice. In its calling upwards. And meaning, when it comes, will strike down like lightning. Meaning will set this whole world on fire.

The apocalypse.

Yes, the apocalypse.

You’d like this to be the last night of the world – of this world. The last night there ever was. But it won’t be, will it? There’ll be another night and another one …

This isn’t yet the night of the world, philosopher. This isn’t yet the last night. This is the penultimate night. The night before the last night – the endless night. But at least we have a corner of the night all to ourselves. Where we can do whatever we like …

Where do your friends think you’ve gone, do you think ?

Off with a beautiful and mysterious organisational manager …

Are there really such things? They’ll think I’ve kidnapped you. Turned you. They’ll think I’m a walking honey trap …

And was it? Did Alan put you up to this?

You’re already trapped – you know that. If you are trapped, that is …

I’m the sort of person you ought to loathe, philosopher. So why don’t you? You’re in the enemy’s camp. With the enemy’s wife. You’re a traitor …

You’re a traitor, too. You don’t believe in all this – in Organisational Management. Even when you say you do. Especially then.

I think it’s possible that I willed you into existence. That you didn’t exist until I … wanted you to. I think you were born from my … deadness. I dreamt you up, one night I couldn’t sleep. I conjured you up out of my desire for the opposite of Organisational Management …

Nothing matters on a night like this. None of the normal rules apply. They’re all suspended. This is a state of exception.

Silence.

Laure, drawing close.

This is the part where we kiss, philosopher.

Kissing.

Are you still dead?

Still dead. More dead than ever.

Haven’t I woken you up?

You’ve woken up death, destroyer of worlds. Destroyer of Organisational Management.  

Kissing.

How long will you stay dead?

Forever. I’ll never be alive.

And will you ever die – finally?

Death isn’t going to come. There’ll be no end for me. I’m immortal, philosopher. Wouldn’t you like to be immortal?

There is just one eternal day, without morning or evening. That’s what Augustine said.

That’s how it is. And on that day – tonight, right now, we’re going to live forever. We’re living forever right now, right here. Am I allowed to say things like that?

Kissing.

I think we should fall into a question together. How do we do that?

We’re doing it now.

I’ll be Laure, and you can be Georges Bataille. We’ll both be mad.

Her phone, buzzing.

That’s my husband. He wants to know where I am.

Does he know you’re with me?

Maybe he does.

What are you going to say to him?

That I was with you. Maybe. Not really. I don’t know. I’ll lie.

What will you say?

That I had a migraine. That I had to go back to my office to lie down.

Won’t he come looking for you?

He knows I like to be alone sometimes. And he wouldn’t be so tasteless to pursue me. Anyway, I’ve got to show you one more thing.