They’re acting as if, Livia’s professors, even if they don’t that their acting as if. It’s all as if European hadn’t been destroyed. They’re playing let’s pretend – even if they don’t think they’re playing let’s pretend. As if Old Europe were still Old Europe. As if the atrocity hadn’t happened. As if Abomination wasn’t rampant. As if the great hollowing hadn’t occurred.
They’re fossil Europeans. Throwback Europeans. To a time when Europe was still Europe. They haven’t grasped the European voiding. The European cavitation. They don’t get that Europe only lives on in effigy. In simulacra. And they, too, are nothing more than effigies and simulacra.
They’re part of the old European bloodstream, Livia’s professors. Pumped out from the old European heart. Still running with old European blood. As if that heart was still beating. As though Europe were still alive.
Only Livia had accepted the European death. Only she grasped it – that a new world had opened – a new non-world.
Europe! What does that word mean anymore? The Europe of thinkers and poets and artists … The Europe of the great European culture … The Europe that believed in Europe, in its thinkers, its poets, its artists … The Europe that wasn’t yet a museum … Wasn’t simply an archive … It’s gone, it’s all gone.
They thought they still lived in European time, Livia’s professors. They thought Europe still existed. That they might retire to Europe, or something. That it would still be there when they went back.
They didn’t feel the European hangover. They hadn’t grasped the European tragedy. And the fact that the tragedy that wasn’t experienced as a tragedy, which is part of the tragedy.
They didn’t understand the European disaster, Livia’s professors. Which wasn’t even suffered as a disaster, which is part of the disaster. The European catastrophe. What could it mean – when no one even knows it as catastrophe?
The last European poet is long gone. The last artist. The last novelist. The last philosopher, God knows. The last playwright. The last composer. The last, the last. There are no more European miracles left.
They didn’t understand, Livia’s professors, that the Anglo-American way of thinking has essentially conquered Europe. Has essentially destroyed it. Which is to say the organisational management way of thinking and being. And the analytic-philosophy way of thinking and being.
It’s wipe-out. It’s European Armageddon. Nothing’s strong enough. There’s nothing that can withstand it all. Nothing that can resist. The Anglo plague has been released.
It’s begun, and that means it can only play out. It’s started, which means it can only unfold, only fan out. Only spread and spread.
Germany’s fallen. France will, in time. Mitteleuropa. All the universities. The culture.
The true inheritors of European thought must understand the impossibility of inheritance. The true legatees of European ideas must grasp that there can be no legacy of European thought – not anymore.
That the chain has broken! That the line cannot hold! There’s nothing that can be passed down, and no one to receive what has been passed down. There’s a crisis of inheritance.
We’re the real inheritors – because we know ourselves to be incapable of inheritance. We’re the only legatees – because we know that we’re incapable of receiving a legacy.
We who are open to old Europe know ourselves to be essentially closed to old Europe. We who wish to inherit the thought of Old Europe know that there is nothing to inherit.
And this is our Europeanness. That we know only the nothing of Europe, the void of Europe. The fact that Europe can only be inherited as void.
Which is why idiocy is the only possible relation to the legacy of European traditions. And drunkenness. The drunken yearning to be worthy of European inheritance. That the ideas of Deleuze could be passed down to us. The thoughts of Ricoeur! Of Gadamer!
We’re the legatees of European philosophy, because we cannot be its legatees. We’re it’s caretakers, UK European philosophy, because we cannot be its caretakers. We’re its memory-keepers, because we cannot keep its memory. The ones it’s been entrusted to, because it cannot be entrusted to us. We’re the ones who will pass it down, because we cannot possibly pass it down.
Derrida’s looking up at us. Deleuze, hoping not to be disappointed. Mainlander. Hartmann. All the European jewels. All the European treasures. They’ve fallen to us! Who merely play with European jewels. Who merely toy with European treasures.
The undeserving! The thought-deficient! The ailing! The failing! The miserable! The stupid! We’re the ones to whom the baton has been passed, even though we immediately dropped the baton. We’re the ones who are supposed to carry the flame, even though we all at once extinguished the flame. It all depends on us, even as it cannot possibly depend upon us.
Soon, there will be no more UK European philosophy departments left! They’ll have closed the others down.
Except for us! Except for Merica philosophy, in the belly of the Organisational Management beast. Us! We’re the ones! We’re the elected! The last of a breed! The last outpost!
And here in the northeast, far from anywhere! As remote as the old monastic communities who kept the memory of Europe alive. And its fallen to us! We’re the inheritors! We’re the legatees! It’s been handed down to us.
Apostolic succession. Heidegger – Arendt – etc. Husserl – Gadamer – the others. And us. Us!
We’re the ones! We’re the chosens! We’re the remnant.
The really smart PhDs have gone where the money is. The power. The prestige. The smart ones have sniffed the air and fled the continental philosophy ship.
They’re betting on analytic philosophy. They’ve gone Anglo. Of course they have.
Work in Progress 