We weren’t part of the world, that was the thing. We weren’t of it. We had no … investment in it, the world.
It wasn’t our world, that was the thing.
We were practically born Gnostic, she said. We had the Gnostic temperament. We were Gnostic Types – naturally.
We knew the rottenness. The poison. We knew the lies.
We didn’t need to be taught disgust. It only had to be awoken in us again, our disgust. To stop us getting too comfortable. That’s what the wine’s for.
Imagine it: a Gnostic philosophy department. Modules on Gnosticism. A Gnostic degree path. What a USP!
Imagine it: an MA. In Gnostic studies. A Research Centre on World-Disgust. We could supervise Gnostic PhDs. Host World-Hatred conferences …
A whole school of thought! A school of anti-thought. A school of anti-philosophy, or non-philosophy. Or not yet philosophy.
Livia saw in us what she had taken years to learn. She saw it in us: as a matter of instinct. As a reflex.
We recoiled against the world. We flinched – a flinching of our whole selves, of everything we are. We shuddered at the world – a shuddering of our whole bodies. Of all we were. We shuddered in thought – and that was our thought. That was our Gnosticism.
Oh, it wasn’t about what we wrote down. It wasn’t about our so-called research. It wasn’t about what we tried to write – our papers. Our essays. The drafts of our books. No, that wasn’t important – none of that.
Our gesture was all. Our flinching – in life! Our instinctive – rejection. Of it all. Of everything.
Our hatred! The way we recoiled – with everything we were.
The philosophy of our lives. The un-philosophy. The non-philosophy. Non-philosophy as a spiritual practice.
Livia’s task was to bring it to the university, our non-philosophy. Livia was to make it show itself. In its strength. Its extremity. And for that she needed to increase the tension. To charge up the field of forces. To work up the Kraftheld, as she called it.
That’s when we’d come into our own. Become what we were, or whatever. Achieve our full Gnosticism. Spread our gnostic wings.
But for that, Livia would have to step aside. She would have to prepare the conditions for it, our Gnosticism. Bring it up against its opposite. Charge up the polarities.
And no longer protect us, Livia! No longer stand between us and the university. No longer hold it at bay, the whole horror.
Livia herself would have to disappear, that was the thing. Livia had to give us the final push – by her disappearance. She’d make way for us. Letting us to become what we were. What we could be.
Work in Progress 