Author: Lars Iyer

Organisational Management’s not so much a subject area, as a way of doing things. Organisational Management, integrating itself into every discipline. A new philosophical movement – that’s how we have to see it.

Organisational Management’s not a body of knowledge, but a way things are done. A practice. A methodology, if you like. A way of approaching problems.

Even philosophy could benefit. If we could just be a little more organisational, a little more managerial. Don’t we see? It’s about a logic. A practice. It’s a mindset, more than anything …

 

The Organisational Management revolution! The Organisational Management paradigm shift!

It’s results-oriented! Outcomes-focused! There’s to be no more imprecision!

It’s about efficiency, really. In a time where resource allocation needs to be optimised. When we’re more aware than ever that there’s not infinite amounts of money.

We need to identify strategies that work. It’s a bit like CBT, except for the world.

Maybe they sense something missing in Organisational Management. A kind of philosophical phantom limb. A dull ache. They want more. They Desire. They Yearn. In their own way. In an Organisational Management way.

 

What does Organisational Management yearning look like? They’d like to be more than they are. They’re all about logistics. And order. They’re all about procedures. The lines in which they colour.

They want something else. They want the pure fire heaven. Some directed energy weapon from the sky. They want lightning to strike above them. And that’s who are we are, to them. That’s what we bring.

 

The philosophical supplement. The philosophical phantom limb. They’re not sure what they want, but they think it might be us.

 

This merger … This mind meld …

Do they want to tame us, or untame themselves? Do they want to tie us up or loosen themselves? Both. Neither.

A becoming-organisational-management of philosophy. A becoming-philosophy-of-organisational-management. A double becoming.

So there we were, Cicero’s secret enclave. Cicero’s pocket of resistance. Cicero’s foxhole, of sorts. A new European philosophy department, at a time when they were closing European philosophy departments.

But it was a crypto-philosophy department. A hidden philosophy department. A philosophy department that dare not speak its name.

 

The last philosophy department, in its way. A posthumous philosophy department. A philosophy department after the death of the original philosophy department. That no one expected to rise from its grave. To come back into appearance.

Even the other heads of department had a respect for Cicero. Her chutzpah. Her canniness. They admired her politicking, which they, for the most part, couldn’t be bothered to do. They were impressed that, at the end of her career, she could be bothered to do this. That she had the motivation.

And of course Cicero had the credentials. She had the CV. She was respected. Looked up to. She’d brought in millions in research money. She’d had a distinguished research career. She’d partnered with some of the best universities in the US. And she wasn’t just going to cruise to retirement. She wasn’t going to see out her last years doing the same old thing.

Cicero had a plan: the other heads of department had an intimation of that. Cicero horizon-scanned. She could see it coming at a civilisational level: the new control system. She knew it was nigh, the new control grid. She knew she needed philosophy to understand what was really going on.

Philosophy had been reborn. But even then, we kept quiet. Kept low. Cicero was clear: there was to be no triumphalism about the rebirth of philosophy. We were very humble. Made no great claims.

The other departments were very curious. They sent their spies to see what they were doing. Infiltrated our Open Days. Strolled around our accommodation! Our old philosophy offices! Peered into our project room! Appreciated the design features, the attention to detail in our suite of offices!

Real design! Attention to detail! Not the usual generic crap! All the touches, which Cicero oversaw herself.

And the Philosophy website: cool. Simple. Elegant. And the Philosophy brochures. Uncluttered. With none of the usual identikit photos.

They were looking at us with envy, all the other departments. Cicero knew that. Cicero was aware. She took it into account. So she played it extra-humble. It was nothing really … a teaching initiative … An experiment … an indulgence in her later years … A chance to fool around before she retired …

She assembled a college of friendly senior staff to help us. To watch over us. To lend us legitimacy. Members of the Senate. Lofty names. Professors, all. Experts in every field. Our protectors. A surrounding band of angels. Who came to our socials. Who came to our Christmas dos, sipping wine.

Old allies of Cicero’s. Cicero-respectors. Who were impressed at what Cicero had done. Supporters of philosophy. Old Europeans, almost all. Foreigners, for the most part. Appreciators of European-style philosophy. Of Continental philosophy, with which they were all familiar.

And Cicero started a European department. What daring! Who would do such a thing!

*Cicero could always sweep all before her at university meetings. She could politic better than anyone. She knew how to get what she wanted. It was effortless. That’s what a communist upbringing teaches you.

How had she done it: open a philosophy department when the university had closed one so emphatically only a few years earlier? How had she created an entirely new philosophy programme of study when the university had declared itself utterly allergic to philosophy not so long ago?

How had she done it, when the higher ups couldn’t even speak about the trauma of closing the old philosophy department? When the memories of the old philosophy clearly made upper and lower management cringe? How had he pulled it off, even as older staff still remembered the farewell speech of the head of the old philosophy department?

But Cicero did it. Cicero outmanouevrered the enemy. Cicero boxed very clever. Cicero went the back door route. Cicero drew upon old allies. Secret connections. She called in some favours. She’d done things for people, and now she wanted things done in return.

How was it possible? But it was possible. A philosophy department. Philosophy, born again at Newcastle! Philosophy, alive again oh! Philosophy, rising, phoenix-like. Blazing into the sky.

Cicero had favourites, it’s true. Cicero could be moody. Cicero could even sulk.

Cicero wasn’t immune from the usual pettinesses. She wasn’t superhuman. She could be short. She could play favourites. She could monologue. She could be changeable, even moody.

Cicero wasn’t always able to maintain front of house. That wasn’t Cicero’s thing: front of house. And it was even a kind of privilege for us to see Cicero’s bad moods. It meant Cicero could let her guard down in front of us.

It meant a kind of confiding in us. It meant Cicero was willing to be who she was in front of us. It meant that she could just be, with us. That we were people she felt comfortable with. Could let her guard down in the company of.

So to see her short-tempered, to see bared teeth, visibly frustrated, was a privilege. A sign of special closeness.

 

To see all the sides of Cicero. To see her from all the angles. That was our privilege. To see all the way into the inner workings of Cicero. To see Cicero’s fallibilities. Her weakness. Her fallenness: why not call it that?

Cicero knew the people she wanted around her. She knew she was getting older. That she couldn’t go on forever. She knew it was a question of assembling a team. Of bringing together a cadre. Of constituting one. People who would Understand.

 

Cicero liked our humility. We were people who’d be happy to remain in the provinces. We didn’t have Lofty Ambitions. We weren’t all Cambridged and Oxforded up. We came from lesser universities. From low league-table universities.

Which were, of course, the only places where you could study European European philosophy. Not Anglicised European philosophy. Not Analytic-style European philosophy. But European European philosophy.

Cicero liked the fact that we were drawn to it, European European philosophy. As she was, back in the day. As Cicero herself was, back behind the iron curtain.

Why did Cicero hand things over to us? Why, in the first place, did she give us jobs? Why did she pluck us out of obscurity?

The fact that we were working class. The fact that we came from the crappier universities. The fact that we had no expectations. That we weren’t careerists. The fact that we weren’t academic mountaineers. We weren’t ascenders. The fact that we weren’t looking for careers in management.

We were low-born: that’s what she like. We saw things from a low point of view. From a rat’s point of view. We looked for corners to hide. For cracks in which to disappear. For strategic retreat.

We didn’t trust the world, that was the thing. We had a natural working class scepticism. We knew something of the enemy. Of ruses. Techniques. We understood something of evil. How evil operated. What evil wanted.

No coincidence that the move happened after Cicero left. After she took extended leave or retired or whatever. Only then, only in the wake of Cicero would they dare to make this move.

Because Cicero knew, and they knew Cicero knew. Because Cicero understood the Great Game – they could see that. Cicero could play strategically. She understood realpolitik.

Cicero had the cunning of old Europe – they could see that. Of the Eastern bloc. Of European culture. Cicero knew their wiles. Their stratagem. Cicero understood the apparatchik logic. The Party mentality. Cicero had a long Mitteleuropean memory …