Literary culture’s dead. Philosophical culture died a long time ago. So what do we do now? Carry on with the great pretence?
Students don’t read. Our colleagues don’t read, not really. No one cares about this stuff but us. No one’s even heard of our culture heroes.
Absolute irrelevance doesn’t bother us.
Our deluded continentialism. Our misguided European enthusiasm. Our perverse European excitement.
The vast secondary commentary industry. The vast introductory books industry.
Providing explanations of everything. Contextualising everything. Explaining everything and thereby explaining it away. Contextualising everything and thereby removing all context from it. Lifting it out of history. Out of geography! Making it understandable by anyone! Anywhere! Like some kind of currency!
How many people would read a monograph we wrote? £100 a pop, right – no one’s going to buy it. It would never been seen in an actual bookshop. No one would ever see a physical copy. How about ordering it for their university library? At best, it’ll be available on some pirate site. With all the other PDFs.
Work in Progress 