The Board of Studies

The Board of Studies, postgraduates. One of the most important of our meetings.

The integrity of the Board of Studies is everything: didn’t Livia always say that? It must be unbreakable.

It’s the curtain wall! It’s the last stand! It’s where you defend philosophy – defend what you teach. And resist the things they want t make you teach.

The Board of Studies is a bond – a powerful bond – an immensely powerful one! Even all the malign forces in the university can’t break it.

The Board of Studies is the ark, Livia said. It’s the place where things can be saved. It can hold back the Flood.

And we are the Board of Studies. It’s what we are – collectively! Together! The BoS secures the possibility of study – real study.  It guards our students’ study.

No one can crush the Board of Studies so long as there are no weak links. An injury to one of the members of the Board of Studies is an injury to all. We must never yield.

The Board of Studies is the sum of our intelligence. Of all our abilities. Of all our accidents. Of our past lives. Everything we are. Yes, we should take it seriously. Even desperately seriously.

There’s nothing more important than the Board of Studies: that’s what we should tell ourselves. Our life peaks here, in the Board of Studies. We have to stand firm. Maintain the phalanx. Be ready to fight back to back against all the idiocies of the university. Shields locked together!

It’s the Spartans at Thermopylae, and so on. We’re here to defend much more than ourselves.

The dignity of philosophy: that’s what it’s fallen to us to safeguard. And European philosophy. UK European philosophy, within the contemporary academy. That’s what we have to watch over.

The thinkers of the past two and half thousand years. The great books of our civilization. That’s what we’re defending. Livia was vehement.

But why then did she deliberately employ people who were incapable of that? Why did she deliberately appointed Shiva as a leader?

She recruited us, who she knew would be overrun. She wanted our defeat, who knew we could only fail our mission. We were supposed to fuck up. To betray the phalanx. To flee our stations. To collapse dead drunk, or whatever.

Look at us – half of us are on the floor. This is our test, and we were supposed to fail it. We were supposed to fuck up – supposed to let the enemy swarm over us. How do we figure that?