Only now, in this moment, was our retrieval of European philosophy important. Only now, in this nucleus of time, did it make sense. Only now was our idiotic retrieval important. Was it legible to Livia.
Did she foresee the coming of Organisational Management? The takeover of the university by Organisational Management? The transformation of what was real into the organisable and the manageable by Organisational Management?
Did she see that our idiocy was needed now, as not at any other time? Was it only now that she could take her tiger’s leap towards us?
Now – her messianic now. When our idiocy flashed up. Became salvific.
The potential of our idiocy: that’s what she saw. The way it might be used.
In her philosophy department! As disclosing the messianic mission of her philosophy department! Even in, and perhaps especially as, the inevitable failure of her philosophy department!
With us, the whole of the humanities leapt forward – into idiocy. With us, philosophy took its idiocy leap. Its stupidity plunge. It tumbled down the waterfall of stupidity. It feel like idiocy rain.
What we inherited as European philosophy. What came to us, what flashed up as European thought. In the teeth of analytic philosophy! Over and against the analytic philosophical world view, which is to say, the Organisational Management worldview.
What continental thinking could become on our island kingdom. In our island story! What it was for us! In its constellation of thinkers for us. Like toy stars stickered on a child’s bedroom ceiling.
Our idiot’s European philosophy. Our fool’s version continental thought. In our ersatz Old Europe. A continent to which we’d never been!
Timely because untimely. Relevant because irrelevant. Clear because obscure. Central because marginal.
In our obscurity. Which was clarity itself in its obscurity. In our marginality. Which was centrality because of its marginality.
We had moved to centre stage, in Livia’s mind. We had become geniuses, in Livia’s mind. Geniuses in our idiocy! We were world-saviours, in Livia’s mind. Because we could not save the world! Our moment had come, in Livia’s mind. Because of the perfection of our uselessness. The times were in need for us. Because we were so utterly outside our times.
Our repetition of the tradition. Our making it anew. Because we could barely read it, European philosophy. Because we couldn’t understand it, European philosophy. Because we were mere apes, poring through its pages, European philosophy.
In a sense, Livia created us. In a sense, Livia uttered the words, let there be idiots. She found us. She recognised us. For what we could be. She discovered us, in our losers’ corner. At the annual British Society for European Philosophy conference.
She was receptive to us, Livia. She was open to us, Livia. She saw us. And that was her moment of messianic intervention.
Hadn’t she lived her entire life waiting for this? Didn’t it make sense of her work to date, of her academic labours, that had led her through mathematics to philosophy – and to messianic philosophy. To the philosophy of Walter Benjamin and his friends.
Wasn’t it only now – now – that she could have discerned us, Livia? Wasn’t it because of the present crisis, which Livia had also discerned? Wasn’t that how she could blast us out of the academic continuum?
Cessation: that’s what we promised. Dialectics at a standstill.
Our study – which was only the parody of study – brought all productive academic work to an end. Everything the university was trying to achieve! The business of the university. The university as business.
No, we couldn’t be accounted for. We couldn’t be explained.
We can’t be explained, not ultimately. We can’t be accounted for.
The destruction has already occurred. The Mercia Philosophy Department had already exploded philosophy. It now had to spread, that explosion. Which is to say, it had to be understood in its messianic significance.
And all of it. for laughs! None of it serious!
The idiot is humorous. The idiot is funny, whether obviously or inadvertently.
The idiot steps onto the stage at this time. At the time of the great poisoning. Of the great disabling. Of the great geoengineering. At the time of the machinations of Organisational Management in the darkness.
If it wasn’t for us there’d be dead repetition, that’s all. The dead UK repetition of European thought. In dull scholarship. In endless secondary literature. The dead hand of commentary. The andmoreagain of introductory books. Of the guide to this, of the dummy’s guide to that, of X in 90 minutes. The handbook of Y …
The hellish reality of the always the same, in the UK version of European thought. The eradication of a genuine passing on of European thought, in UK continental philosophy.
Conferences devoid of meaning. Empty and nonsensical paper giving. Publication, and so on. The stifling overflow of sameness and meaninglessness.
We’d changed the university into a forcefield. We made academia a place of polarities. We were charging things up.
It wasn’t about us as individuals. It was about our collective idiocy. The constellation of our idiocy. A group thing!
It was about what happens between us as idiocy. It’s idiocy as speech – idiotic speech. Charged-with-stupidity speech.
It was about a forcefield. A charge. There was an energy. An electricity.
Something was happening between us. We were gathering our strength, even as it seemed only that we were pooling our weakness. We were summoning our forces, as it seemed that we were dissipating our energies. We were preparing for our leap, even if for us it seemed only that we were falling.
But we needed a ringleader. We needed an impresario.
Work in Progress 