Author: Lars Iyer

Drinking.

The world is disgusting, we know that. But today, it’s more than usually disgusting …

We’re here to bring ourselves back from the dead … Here to bring ourselves back from the brink or take ourselves to the brink, one of the two.

Drink is the answer, we agree. Or is it the question? Or is drink the question and the answer – both at once?

Don’t try and be clever.

Agreement: the disaster’s deepening. Let’s drink to forget that!

Agreement: there’s nothing in our lives. Let’s drink to forget that, too!

Drinking to forget. What we learnt today. Our defeats today. How we fucked up again today. How we screwed our lives up today.

Drinking for oblivion. To forget our mistakes! Our blunderings! Drinking to forget the whole Organisation Management thing! The whole teaching business ethics thing!

But we drink to discover, too. There’s an opening that we have to refind, drunkenly … gropingly. A sense of the possible. A sense of youth: that we can recover our youths. That we can return to youth again.

We want to be innocent again – drunkenly innocent. We want to be young again, for a night. We want to lift our heads, for a night. We want to look up into the sky, for the night. Upwards! At the sky, rushing. At the clouds rushing through the night.

Ours is a drinking search. A search through drinking. That needs drinking. Ours is a quest that begins with drinking, and perhaps ends with it, too. Whose means are drinking …

We’re looking for disorientation in thought. For confusion in thought. Error is necessary. Wanderings off the path – far from the path. Staggerings. Stumblings.

Free fall’s necessary. To fall, fall through the night. Falling, but dreaming of an end to our falling. For something we could be smashed against. For our destruction to coincide with our salvation: one and the same.

If only we could coincide with ourselves – in death. Be present to ourselves – in death. Now – we’d say to ourselves, and be dead. Here – we’d say to ourselves, at the moment of our deaths.

But for now: falling. Through all the time there is. And isn’t that why we drink: to accelerate the fall? To feel time whistling by our ears …

Whitley Sands.

Aren’t you worried you’ll be seen? I ask.

Maybe I’d like to be seen, Priya says. With my … young … lover.

Walking.

It’s like there’s some absolute divide between us and everyone else, Priya says. Because we’re … infatuated or whatever it is. Because we’re living more intensely. Romance makes you feel exalted, doesn’t it? It makes you high. You feel like some secret aristocrat who knows the secret of everything …

Lovers are smug, I say.  They’re always kinda in love with themselves. With their love.

You always have to put a downer on everything, Priya says.

It’s like nature’s thrown us a treat and we’re supposed to be grateful, I say. To moon over one another in gratitude. When really it’s part of the whole machine.

What machine? Priya asks.

The natural machine, I say. The machine of nature. Romance is nature’s honey trap. That’s what it’s called isn’t it: when they lure you in via someone pretty? Some hottie specifically sent out to target you? … See, nature wants us trapped. Confined. Seeking all our salvation from romantic love …

So where should we seek it? Priya asks.

In being against nature, I say. Against everything. All these feelings … This elation … This craving … It’s all it’s supposed to be. That’s the very sane madness of lovers. Our rational irrationality. Our law-abiding prohibition. To which we totally succumb …

But it is an exception, Priya says. It’s like a reprieve. It’s like we’ve been let off from ordinary life. The usual rules don’t apply, right?

Sure, it’s like a reprieve, I say. It’s like we’re exempt.

God, you’re so meta, Priya says. You can’t just experience stuff. You can’t just give yourself over to things.

Can you? I ask.

This is our … secret kingdom, Priya says. How we are together. How we hang out.

The way we fuck, even … Something … new has come into the world. Don’t you feel that?

It doesn’t matter what we feel, I say.

Look around you, Priya says. The sky’s doing its sky thing, the sea’s doing its sea thing. And we’re supposed to be doing our lovers on the beach thing. Just being happy, or whatever. And instead, we have to be meta. Have to talk about life instead of living it. We have to ask our questions.

It just means we’re conscious, I say. We’re awake.

It means we’re detached and in denial, Priya says.

Maybe it’s natural for think we can be against nature, Priya says. Maybe that’s human hubris.

What we are is a capacity to negate nature, I say. To say no – a great no to it all.

So what are we doing, walking on the beach hand in hand? Priya says.

Being smug, I say.

My flat.

You have an optimistic and trusting nose, Priya says.

How can you tell? I ask. What have noses got to do with anything?

You can see everything in the nose, Priya says. And the chin. And in the shape of the eyes. And you have such kind fingers, though your thumb looks rather stubborn.

Is this how lovers talk? I ask.

I really wouldn’t recall, Priya says.

What about with your husband? I ask.

Oh that was years ago, Priya says. I’m not sure I want to remember.

Was there a honeymoon period? I ask.

There’s always a honeymoon period, Priya says. Then there was a humdrum period. Then there was a blue period – a fifteen-years-together-and-what-for? period.

And what period are you in now? I ask.

The illicit period, Priya says.

Silence.

I’m the sort of person you ought to loathe, philosopher, Priya says. So why don’t you? You’ve invited the enemy in. You’re betraying yourself. And your people. And philosophy. And everything.

Maybe it’s my revenge, I say.

On what? On organisational management? Priya asks. Because I’m the head of department’s wife … I see it … This is your way of lobbing a grenade into the enemy camp … Well, maybe.

He doesn’t seem like a bad guy, your husband, I say. I like way he dresses – his three piece suit. It gives him some distinction. Is that why you went for him?

The question is why I went for you, Priya says.

I suppose you’ve had a series of lovers, I say. I suppose he likes it.

No, actually, Priya says. Nothing like that.

And his northern accent, I say. And his easy going manner. He seems very affable.

He is affable, Priya says. He’s really very nice.

And there’s the management style of your husband, I say. The organisational management style …

My husband thought it was a good idea, bringing philosophy into organisation management …, Priya says. Exploring synergies.

And you can say that with a straight face? I say. You can repeat those things? Anyway, they made him do it.

They did make him do it, Priya says. But he has a good attitude, unlike you. I know you’re sneering.

Where are you going to tell him you were this afternoon? I ask. How are you going to account for yourself?

I’ll say I was at the gym, as usual, Priya says. At exercise class.

Does he suspect? I ask. Surely he must suspect. He must have some sense that your mind’s elsewhere. And your body …

My body’s not elsewhere, Priya says. I fuck him too.

You’re so shameless, I say.

I am, aren’t I? Priya says. How can she do this to her husband?: that’s what you’re thinking. But I like doing this to my husband. It feels right to be doing this to my husband.

Why do you never call him by name? I ask.

Because he’s essentially anonymous, Priya says. Because he’s a force. Because he’s a collection of husband drives. Anyway, I don’t want to think about him …

Silence.

But there’s a reason we’re here, isn’t there? Priya says. Are you waiting to get down to it? For the real business to start? You’ll have to court me first. Compliment me on what I’m wearing. Tell me I have … sparkling eyes. Notice my new hairstyle. I haven’t actually got a new hairstyle, but you get the idea. I want to hear some sweet nothings. Some sweet philosophical nothings, if necessary. I want to be re-seduced. I want to be seduced all over again.

Win me. Win my heart, philosopher, Priya says. I want to feel like the most important girl in the world. Make it all about me. That no one matters to you but me. Come on, complement me on my outfit. On what I’m wearing. On my earrings, for fuck’s sake. I’m wearing pearl earrings …

I do think you’re beautiful, I say.

Beautiful, philosopher? Priya says. What do you mean by beauty?

You today. Your face touched with light, I say. The fascination of your eyes. Of my being looked at, by those eyes. Of those eyes, turning towards me.

That’s more like it, Priya says. Continue.

You can make things happen – just by your presence, I say. People are shaken out of themselves. Reminded …

Of what? Priya says.

Of the fact that beauty is alive, I say. Of the fact that beauty can pass through the earth. The fact that beauty can arrive here, in this town, on these streets. The fact that miracles are possible and the world really can be overturned.

Oh, you’re good at this, Priya says.

Beauty: is proof that God exists, after all, I say. That we’re not all doomed, after all. That we’re not all destroyable, replaceable, murderable, strangleable, chokeable, shootable, stabbable.

Don’t be so dark, Priya says.

Longsands.

Walking with Cicero.

The sea, very far out. Is it an extra low tide? Will it be followed by an extra high tide? Is the tsunami coming in?

Cicero, quoting: Everything is empty, everything is past. All our wells are dried up, even the sea has receded. Alas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown?

Exactly! Exactly!

The evil is massing, like clouds, Cicero says. The evil’s thickening. Covering the sky. We look up, and we don’t know what we’re looking at. We see the darkness, and we don’t know what it is.

Black waves will break, Cicero says. A black tide is coming in. Black skies are coming. But everything will look exactly the same. 

What's that got to do with the Organisational Management move? Ava asks.

Shh – listen, I say.

You ask me about your role in all this, Cicero says. About what to do. You tell me you despair. But I say, hold on to your despair, because it's a way of becoming free of the world. I say understand your despair as a gift. Because it's an incitement, an awakening; a calling, and even the highest calling. Because it means you're not part of the demonic realm. 

This world is refusable, Cicero says. It doesn’t have to be your world. We don’t have to succumb. You must live as not. Be Organisational Management philosophers as not Organisational Management philosophers. Be applied ethics philosophers as not applied ethics philosophers. Be tame academics as not tame academics. You have to live against the grain of the world.

Against the grain of Organisational Management? Hans asks. But what good will that do?

It will intensify your resistance, Cicero says. Your thought.

But we’ll be too busy teaching business ethics, or whatever! Ava says.

Your philosophy will have to go underground, Cicero says. Your philosophy will become an active principle of subversion, revolt and antinomianism. It will be an inward revolution. Pure refusal. Pure retreat. Pure withdrawal. Negativity will become an active principle. A way of living against the world. 

Sounds like an active nihilism, I say.

Nihilism will flip and become something else, Cicero says. You’ll discover how to live in the opposite direction.

In the opposite direction of what? Ava asks.

Organisational Management, Cicero says. The endless administration of the world. Its ceaseless management. The coordinates we’re given. The social coordinates. The governmental coordinates. The biopolitical coordinates. The philosophical coordinates. You’ll become cryptophilosophers, working in secret. Working against everything.

Pondering.

So the Organisational Management move will be the making of us? Hans asks. How could that be? I mean, look at us … Look at Ava! Look at Carl – he's hardly the future of anything, is he!

Thanks, Ava says.

He's right, I say. We just make things worse. We're just a bad joke … 

You’re full of disgust, Cicero says. You feel horror – at yourselves; that's your gift. There's a dynamics to your self-hatred. To your thrashings. To your convulsions. There's a life. You'll find salvation where it’s least sought. Where it's least expected. You'll find salvation in the lack of salvation. You'll find hope in the lack of hope. Which is why your role will be unique. You'll be the doom speakers. You'll voice disgust’s disgust. You'll be the philosophers of horror’s horror.

But why us and not you? I ask. Aren’t you the person to do this? You have the smarts. The background. You’ve done the reading. You see things as they are.

I have my role, Cicero says. You have yours.

So we have to write things? I ask. Magnum opuses? Start a new school of philosophy? Or is it about a practice of philosophy? A way of living philosophy?

Cultivate a true desire for the end of the world, and everything will come from that, Cicero says.

But we already want the end of the world, I say. We know the hideousness of it all. And we know our hideousness … 

Not yet, Cicero says. You haven’t reached the depths.

You mean it's going to get worse? Hans asks. We're going to feel worse?

I thought you said we were the doom speakers, Ava says. That we were to voice horror’s horror, or whatever.

You will be, Cicero says. The hatred of air for air. The sky’s hatred of the sky. The earth’s self-hatred. That's what you'll know. That's what you'll speak – as prayer. 

With the move to Organisational Management? Hans asks.

Exactly, Cicero says.

It’s like you welcome it – like you wanted it to happen …, I say.

There's a logic to what's happening, Hans says. Once you see it, you almost want it to accelerate. It's like they're intensifying the pressure. Like they're forcing their agenda ever harder. They’ll stop at nothing. We should just slit our throats now. We should hang ourselves now. It would make sense. It makes more sense than anything.

That's what they want, Ava says. For us to destroy ourselves. 

I want the wave to break, Hans says. I want the flood. I want to go under.

And I want to think there’s an ark somewhere, I say. That will save all the good things – not us, maybe. Not the likes of us. But there’s an ark that carries all the beautiful things, all the good things. That saves the goodness.

All of creation longs for destruction, Cicero says. To be put out of its misery. But that cannot happen until the deepest nihilistic fall of the world. 

What if we’re the madness? Hans asks. What if we’re the ones who should be eliminated? What if our destruction is the solution? Mad people like us. Mad so-called philosophers like us. Mad so-called thinkers, who've taken thought too far. Until it's merged with madness …

Maybe we've driven ourselves mad, Hans says. Spent too  much time in mad company. Too much time reading mad books. Studying mad philosophy. Following you, Cicero. 

There’s a way of living in disgust – pure disgust, Cicero says. There's a way of living in purifying hatred. You have to live in absolute tension with the world. 

Is that what we're doing? Ava asks. What about you?

I'm not like you, Cicero says. I’m not a misfit … I’m not maladjusted. I’m too much of the world. Moses died before reaching the Promised Land: you know that. It was for the young to inherit the future. 

But Organisational Management is hardly the Promised Land! I say.

It’s the opposite of the Promised Land: that’s the point, Cicero says.

Dialectics …, Hans says. So that's why you retired, or whatever … To  abandon us to the end … 

That's why you brought us here, I say. This was the plan all along. You knew what was coming … 

That's why you trained us …, Ava says.

The ultimate source of hope in this world is its end, Cicero says. Don't forget that. 

The Metro to the coast.

The city falling away. The suburbs. Flat fields. Horses, grazing.

Open space. Open skies, criss-crossed by chem trails, as Cicero would call them.

Pondering the meaning of Cicero’s coast-move. What was she looking for at the coast? Why did she move right out of the city? And why did we follow her, out of the city? Because aren’t we moving out there one by one? Don’t I already have my high Cullercoats flat, six floors up, facing away from the sea, it’s true, but still enjoying the coastal ambience; the coastal air? Hasn’t Hans his North Shields maisonette, not far from the Fish Quay, from the world’s greatest fish ‘n’ chips shops? And there’s Ava’s South Shields tenement, just across the Tyne …

We’re philosophers of the coast. Or would-be philosophers of the coast. Or aspiring philosophers of the coast, philosopher being not a description but an honorific, which can be bestowed only by others.

And there’s Cicero herself, the real philosopher of the coast. Cicero, with her rumoured lottery-win money; with her rumoured inheritance, domiciled in handsome Tynemouth not far from the Armstrong memorial. Not far from her beloved Sir James Knott Memorial Flats, on top of the hill, overlooking river and sea …

Was Cicero in search of sea air, full of ozone, following her early retirement? Was it the vistas she wanted – needed – to unfold her more expansive ideas, the full sublimity of her thought, now she was free of her teaching and administrative duties? Was it to be among the coastal people, among seafarers and descendants of seafarers, who, tired of the city, likewise wanted to live among seafarers and descendants of seafarers?

The coast is the place where the lie is exposed: hasn’t Cicero always said that? By the extent of the sky. By the vastness of the sea. The coast is for the undeceived, she's said more than once. The coast is for the unfooled. The coast is for the not entirely destroyed.

We’re here to exchange molecules with the coastal air: that’s what Cicero’s told us. With the coastal sky. With the sea! With the river Tyne as it runs into the sea! We’re here to become porous. For the air to enter into us, or for us to enter the air.

The coast will become our last redoubt: that’s what Cicero’s said. Our last holdout. The coast will draw our kind towards it: the righteous kind. The resisting kind. Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear what’s really going on.

Texting Cicero.

We need her help. We need to be told what to do.

Cicero, our erstwhile organ grinder! Cicero, the old head of the philosophy dept! Cicero, who handpicked us – us – to work here!

Cicero, who plucked us – us – from our provincial universities. Cicero, who summoned us here. Cicero, who scouted the conferences for  … what? Not the up and coming, we were never that …

The desperate! The put-upon! The cornered! 

Yes, Cicero, who sought us out: the prospectless! The defeated – spiritually! Financially! The lower class! The bordering-on-resentful! The all-but-embittered! The skint! The pretty-much-down-and-out! Who’d never normally be given a lectureship at a Russell Group university! 

Cicero, who had some kind of faith in us – no doubt entirely misplaced! Cicero, who was apparently deluded. Cicero, who brought us north to her adopted city.

Did she see signs of brilliance in us? we wonder. Might we be brilliant after all? Brilliant in our stupidity. Brilliant in our mediocrity … Perhaps we’re brilliant inside. Very deeply inside. So deeply we don’t know about it. So deeply we show no signs of it, and never will …

Face it: Sis actually wanted idiots around her. She didn’t want to feel threatened … She wanted a background to allow her brilliance to shine yet brighter. For contrast, like. It was a chiaroscuro thing.

Cicero knew who we were, we agree. What we were for. Cicero understood our role, our apocalyptic role. Part of the end times will be a parade of deformities and grotesques. Not physical, but mental deformity. There’ll be mental  sports! Twistings! Human contortionists! Like in that Hieronymous Bosch painting, but in thought … That's who we are: the cerebral freak show. Obscurants! Hermeticists! Conspiracy theorists!

Anyway, Cicero fought all kinds of dreadful administrative battles to keep the department open, we agree. Indeed, she risked her sanity to open it in the first place. She went to the most gruelling meetings. The most trying meetings. Which is where, in fact, she developed some of her most crucial thoughts, as, she said, the dialectical opposite to said meetings.

Her stuff about the theogenic process. About blind increate formlessness. About the aboriginal nonground. About banished fundamentals. Were it for her gruelling meetings, she would never have come up with them: that's what she said.

And she brought us on! Encouraged us!

I wouldn’t say that, exactly, Ava says. She was pretty insulting.

But it was a kind insulting, Magellan says. It was meant to spur us on.

It was meant to crush us, Hans says.

Yes, but she knew we could rise from our ashes, Magellan says.

I’m still crushed, Hans says.

Don’t be so fragile, Magellan says. It was a bootcamp of sorts. She wanted to toughen us up. Particular you, Gan. She could tell you were a soy boy.

She used to call us shitlibs! Ava says.

Only to wind us up,  Magellan says. To defend our default academic leftism. To sharpen it into a weapon.

She said all the energy of the counterculture was on the right, Hans says. That the left were statist tossers.

But it was in service to the left, Magellan says. To the leftist revolution!

Don’t bet on it! Hans says. Cicero was a provocateur. Do you remember her MAGA cap?

Cicero always saw herself as a principle of negativity, it’s true, Magellan says. As the freedom of the negative.

Isn’t that what she called her band? I ask.

Oh I forgot all about her band, Hans says.

Cicero’s led many lives, Magellan says.

She’s living death now, I say. Her drinking …

Anyway, Magellan, we’ve all ridden the rollercoaster of Cicero’s enthusiasms …, Ava says

… And despairs …, Hans says.

We’ve all been up and down with Cicero …, Ava says.

… Mostly down …, Hans says.

But the highs make it worth it …, Magellan says, In the end, we’re Cicero’s army. Cicero’s ragtag. Cicero’s band of … what?

Idiots, of course! We agree. Holy fools!

Cicero’s texted, I say. She’s inviting us to the coast.

News: they’re moving the Philosophy department into Organisational Management.

General shock. Can they do this sort of thing? Without consultation? Is it allowed?

Apparently.

Is there a rationale? Have they explained themselves?

They don’t have to explain themselves. They just act.

This never would have happened in the old days.

In the old days, we’d never have got jobs. Not at this kind of uni.

True.

Look, It’s just some random thing. Some stupidity. Some manager or another wanted to make their stamp on the uni. Some idiot …

… They’re all idiots …

… Had some interdisciplinary initiative, or something.

What about Organisational Management? What’s in it for them?

Our student numbers, maybe. 

Laughter.

Our international reputation.

Laughter.

Our general sanity and well-adjustedness.

More laughter. 

Why couldn’t they just have left us alone? Why couldn’t we be allowed to go on as we were, untroubled, unharassed? Why should we have to be destroyed and remade? It’s cruel … it’s needless.

Come on – you think this is arbitrary? They’ve declared war on philosophy. They know that it’s philosophy they have to go after. Not history! Not the fine arts! Not music! Not English literature! But philosophy, alone among the humanities!

Because they sense something about philosophy. They feel a kind of awe of philosophy, despite everything. They know us as a threat – unconsciously. They experience us as an enemy – in some recess of their minds.

Because they know only philosophy can grasp what they’re up to. Only philosophy can put all the pieces together and understand their Plan. That only philosophy has the possibility of seeing it in all its dimensions.

What plan?

For unconscious revenge on philosophy. On the humanities in general. There’s a whole institutional unconscious at work. A desire for revenge. On humanities expansiveness. On humanities freedom of thought.

And that’s why the closure of philosophy would never be enough. The humiliation of philosophy: that’s the aim.

Whence the organisational management move. It’s meant to discipline us. To make us biddable. To make us understandable to the university authorities. To have us all teaching business ethics, or whatever. Because the authorities dislike what they cannot contain. What questions them. What questions authority and the limits of authority.

Sheer grandiosity. They have no idea about philosophy! They don't know what we teach!

That’s just it: they have no idea. And they want an idea. They want us teaching applied ethics. Organisational ethics! Management ethics!

But it’s so absurd! It makes no sense …

Of course it makes no sense. That’s the point …

What about meaning?

Forget meaning!

It’s mockery – in plain view. They’re laughing at us.

It’s self-mockery. The uni’s laughing at itself … At everything a university once was …

Were they laughing as they did it? Did it amuse them? Do they know what they’re doing? Couldn’t they sense the nihilism – even if they’d never heard of the word, nihilism? Or did they do it because of the nihilism – an unconscious nihilism, but nihilism nonetheless. Did they do it because of the absurdity?

Look, it’s the madness of the world showing itself. The madness behind the world. A deluge of madness. A mad flood of insanity. And it’s a sublime madness. It’s genius in some random way. Because who would be crazy enough to move philosophy to organisational management?

The uni can do what it likes: that’s what this says. Anything could happen! The greatest absurdity! This is a shock and awe move. This is a cow-the-humanities move. This is a watch it or you’re next move.

It’s like parking a tank on your front law. They can do whatever they like: that’s what they’re showing. They’re doing it because they can – however mad it is. In fact, they’re doing it because of that madness.

Because they’re above reasons, with their like, omnipotence. Above rationality. It’s a show of power – of utter power. It’s to prove they can do exactly as they please, no matter how mad. They can simply bend reality to their will.

Anyway, don’t look at it too closely. Don’t think about it too much. Ponder the logic of the organisational management move and you’ll go quite mad.

Maybe we should go mad. Maybe that's what it'll take. 

We’re misusing our time, Priya says. We’re desecrating our time. Doing wrong things with it. This isn’t how we should be living, is it?

I dont know, I say.

We’re at the bottom of some pit … looking up …, Priya says.

At what? I ask.

I don’t know, Priya says. God, maybe …

Silence.

We don’t have to live like this, Priya says. Things don’t have to be this way. But we do, don’t we? We’re sinners …

We’re fallen, Priya says. Desperately so. Because we don’t lament our fallenness. We don’t experience it, not really. It hasn’t reached us …

What are you turning me into? Priya asks. You and your philosophy! You’ve infected me with philosophy. You’ve made it okay to talk like this – as no one should be allowed talk. No one should be allowed to say these fucking things …

Who’s the organisational manager’s organisational manager? I ask. Who do common or garden organisational managers talk about in reverence? Who’s, like the organisational management G.O.A.T.?

Like, how old is the field? I say. When was organisational management first a thing? Do real organisational managers read academic organisational managers? Seriously. I want to know.

Just because your subject’s ancient and prestigious and totally useless, Priya says. And no one British can basically do it …

I swear time’s slowing down, Priya says. It’s supposed to go quickly when you’ve having fun.

Is that what we’re doing: having fun? I ask.

The day’s going on without us, Priya says. The day’s doing its day thing. And we’re doing our you and I thing. Whatever that is. What is it, anyway? Who are we, anyway? These questions, philosopher. These afternoon questions …

We’re just falling into the afternoon, Priya says. Faster and faster. We’re castaways of the afternoon, the eternal afternoon.