Crushed

Philosophy – a way of seeking to be crushed.


Philosophy – that the dark planet toward which we wanted to be drawn. To be crushed by its gravity! To be pulverised against it!

Philosophy, like that supersun, ten thousand times times greater than the size of the earth.

Sublimely great. Inescapably great. Vast – unimaginably so.


To be drawn into the dark orbit of Phenomenology of Spirit. Of the Science of Logic. Of the complete works of Edmund Husserl.


To be drawn in. Ushered in. To the philosophical Presence. To the philosophical Leviathan. To monster-books. To whale books. To deep plunging books, that would take us down with them.

We don’t want to come up for breaths. We don’t want to breathe, not anymore. We don’t want to live.

To be stifled. For philosophy to place its pillow over our face. To smother us. We don’t want to take another breath. Of course not!

Let philosophy breathe in our stead. Let philosophy breathe where we cannot. We offer up our UK breaths, our working-class breathing. We offer up our British lives, our working class lives!


Didn’t we Sense something in this philosophy. The chance of our destruction? Wasn’t that what we wanted: the chance of our destruction?

Weren’t we lured in by it? Like those weird creatures of the sea-depths. With their dangling lights. We were drawn in to be swallowed by Kant fish and Feuerbach fish and Husserl fish. But we wanted to be swallowed. We were sick and weary of being ourselves.


Almost incidental Destruction. Not-even-noticing-us Destruction. Too vast to care.

We were to be eaten up like plankton. Like krill. Unnoticed. Unimportant.

And nothing even special about our Destruction. And that’s how we wanted it: not for there to be anything special about our Destruction.


To be undone, in a single gesture. To be killed by one blow. Mercifully. Kindly, even.

And barely noticed. Because unimportant – as we were unimportant. Unnoticed – as we, in our insignificance – were unnoticed.


Anonymous death. The death of flies in empty rooms. Curled up on the windowsill.

Irrelevances. Unimportants. Incidentals. We were No Ones. Nothings. Flies or fleas. Infusoria in the water, to be poured away.


And we wouldn’t bother them in our dying. Wouldn’t cry out. Wouldn’t raise our voices. We’d be Good. We’d died quietly. Unnoticed. Because we weren’t worthy of their attention, the Great Books. Because they should be disturbed, the Great Tomes. Because we weren’t to wake them from their slumbers, the books like tombs!


We went to them only to be crushed. Only to be devoured.

We offered ourselves up. We were willing sacrifices.

The books were busy with Mourning. With Praying. With thinking. With Diagnosing. With Marxi-ising. With moralising.

And we, who were we?

Words like great boulders. Words like leftover ruins. Stranded words.

Hard books. Harder than we are. Harder than we could ever be. We’re soft. We’re made of softness.