Our descent.
Do we want to bring the dead back to life, or something.
What dead?
The dead of the old department. Do we want to bring them to life? To retrieve them, like Eurydice.
Eury-who?
The one Orpheus was trying to bring back from the dead.
What would we do with the old department?
They could save us.
Could they, though?
It was a real department – not like ours. It had its own culture, it’s way of doing things. It had its standards. Its notable names. It lasted a while. Thirty years or so. From just after the war to the 1980s. Students remembered it lovingly.
There was a room set aside for debate, most of the day. The Cave, they called it. With some staff member always in attendance, ready for any kind of philosophical talk.
We would never have got into the old department, you know. As students, I mean. We didn’t have the A level grades.
All the better.
We couldn’t have participated in any of their debates. We could never have been part of their philosophical to and fro.
Exactly so.
We wouldn’t have known what to do there. We’re not intellectuals.
We don’t want to retrieve anything. We don’t want Eurydice. We don’t want the old department.
We want in its death. We want what cannot be.
What do you mean? We want it in its impossibility – in the impossibility of that kind of philosophy. In the humanities of the old days. We want our Eurydice forever dead. We want everything dead. We want the endless death of philosophy and the humanities.
We want the dead Eurydice, not the one who can be brought back to life. We want the buried as the buried. The forgotten as the forgotten. We want the dark as the dark. The hidden as the hidden.
We want the forever dead. The death deeper than death. The preliminary flood that’s already washed everything away …
We want to retrieve the old department. We want a taste of what the university used to be. We want the old standards. An academic world that makes sense. Before mass higher education. Before grade inflation. Before the vast press of student numbers. Back when students were educable. When they actually turned up. When they actually had things to say in seminars.
Before the collapse! Before our kind were allowed to run amuck! Back when our kind were kept well away! When our type could only dream of a life in the academy!
But we can’t want that – not really. We can’t what would totally exclude us. What would turn us into Jude the Obscures. Into Thomas the Obscures!
We want to encounter with terroir of all things. The ur-terroir. Out of which everything grows. The terroir of all terrors. The root.
Work in Progress 