Author: Lars Iyer

I think I’ve caught the void from you. Is it contagious?

 

What’s it like being one of your students? God. Pouring all your despair into their ears. Is this what they pay fees for?

 

I’ll miss our talks. I’ll miss talking like this.

It isn’t over yet.

It is though, really. It was always over. 

 

We’re stranded in the bedroom. In your flat. We’ve suspended the world in your studio flat. We’ll never leave. We’re here forever. We’re stuck here. Some part of us will always be stuck here. Forever and ever.

 

You should have a word with your landlord. The double glazing unit’s failed. What a depressing sight. And all those dead flies …

 

Our romance. Our love affair. Laughter. Doesn’t it sound stupid? It’d be okay if you’re French. If you were European. It probably makes sense over there.

The English can’t be sexual in an adult manner. It isn’t part of our culture. Don’t you agree?

We’re having a go at it. We can’t but be self-conscious. We can’t but be disengaged.

So we should have le sex.

 

What would we do all day, if we were together?

We could work at opposite ends of the table. You could be doing your organisational management work, and I’d be doing my philosophy work. Of course, it’s not his and hers offices, but still …

 

I think I’ve forgotten how to read. I can’t read anymore. Is there such a thing as reader’s block? God, all these books … I don’t think I want anything to do with books anymore …

 

I think you made up the void. I think it’s a name for miserabilism. I think the void’s just a lack of fresh air and exercise. You should get out more. Feel the sun on your skin.

 

What’s going on out there?

What’s ever going on out there? Nothing. Everything. The most important things. The least important things. People getting on with their lives.

 

Does anyone else visit your studio? I can’t imagine you having dinner parties up here. Are you into solitude? Is that your thing? Do you like to contemplate things all alone?

 

There’s nothing to say about sex. Nothing that doesn’t sound stupid, anyway.

So sound stupid.

I don’t see why we have to talk about it. Why can’t we just do it? There is no philosophy in the bedroom.

That’s where you’re wrong.

 

The sky’s thinking about itself. It’s thinking its own thoughts.

Is it thinking about us?

It’s got other things to think about.

 

I feel disgusting today,

 

Maybe it shouldn’t just the two of us. It’s very intense, isn’t it – just the two of us. Always the two of us. No one to bounce off. No one to set us off in new directions. No one to talk about. No other couples, or anything. It’s very … self-devouring, or whatever. Self-reflexive. Just bent back upon itself.

 

There’s something unfulfilled in you, too, organisational manager. You don’t believe in anything you say.

I’ve always thought I’d be better off doing something practical. Instead of, like, lecturing. I should start my own business. Go on Dragon’s Den, or whatever.

Do you have an amazing business idea?

I have several.

I don’t believe you.

Actually, I’m just someone who could go into a business and reorganise it. Make It more efficient. More … productive. Amazing. I could operatioanlise it more effectively.

 

Maybe we should ask each other questions. What’s your earliest memory? What’s your favourite film? What did you like to eat most, growing up? What’s your favourite tipple? How did your parents meet?

I don’t think I’m that interested in your past.

Thanks.

A love affair is about the present. It’s about now.

What’s happening now?

 

Tell me about something that happened to you when you were young.

When I was young … I lived an ordinary life. Compared to you. I did ordinary things. I had ordinary happinesses and God knows ordinary sadnesses. Which is to say: nothing happened. Nothing extraordinary, anyway.

I wasn’t talking about anything extraordinary.

Of course you were. You were determined to be extraordinary. Which means you’ll always run up against my ordinariness. I’m just ordinary. Just Jane mundane. Are you disappointed?

No.

What you really want is a European. An East European, probably. Full of Eastern European promise. The inheritor of decades of suffering. And black humour. The darkest humour – forged by all the oppression, or whatever. Full of Eastern European folklore …

 

I always wanted to write the perfect book, and then kill myself. The work, I called it. Everything was about the work.

And did you ever write it?

Maybe I’m trying to write it now.

And kill yourself?

But that’ll never happen. Because I’ll never write anything perfect. Or even any good.

 

So you’re ready to slide in alcoholism.

Perhaps I’m already there.

It’d be romantic for you, alcoholism. It’d be … an artistic destiny. You’d be a truer philosopher, that’s what you’d think. Like you’d been driven to drink because of your profundity. Or maybe that you’d become profound from drinking …

 

Have you ever read the stats on how many children have no genetically relationship to the husband?

Is that what you’d like: a child with me? A cuckoo in the nest?

Maybe.

The fruit of my sober womb. Of my all-too sober womb.

 

Why are you with me? Why do you want to be with me?

For the sex.

No, seriously – what do we actually have in common? Why me? Why not anyone else?

Because you’re … you. Is that a good reason?

It’s because I’m here. Right in front of you.

 

Are you going to start drinking now? In the afternoon?

Why not in the afternoon?

What about decency? What about decorum?

Fuck decency. Fuck decorum.

I’m doing this to you, aren’t I? Driving you to drink. Driving you … somewhere wrong …

Would you like to have that effect?

I have to admit it, I do … I like being … efficacious. I like the idea that the universe isn’t entirely indifferent to my presence …

 

Do philosophers ever write about lust? They should. A philosophy of lust. What would that look like?

 

I want to do it again.

Do you really. So soon?

Why – can’t you get it up?

I’ll … try.

It shouldn’t be hard … I mean difficult. Whereas this should be hard. And what do you know – it is. A miracle.

 

What if I did some dance for you? If I went all … sexy … or is that too sleazy for you? What if I gave you some love-bites? What then?

Then nothing.

What If you gave me some? What would happen then? Our secret would be out.

 

Well, the day’s wearing on. I must away. I can’t think of a good excuse why I should be away any longer than this.

 

Who am I, for you? That’s what I want to know.

I’m blocking your vista. I’m getting in the way of your precious work. Of your thinking-time. Or your reading time. Of your writing.

 

Maybe all this is the opposite of organisational management. Is it the opposite of philosophy?

 

Reading: If I cried out, who would hear me, among the angelic orders. Is this poetry? The kind of thing you read?

It’s like intruding on something, reading this. On some old European dream. What are we doing, reading this kind of thing? Who is it addressed to?

Someone, over our heads. God, maybe. Some European God.

What’s wrong with us? Why aren’t we reached by this? Why aren’t we touched by this? Why don’t we have the time … the space for this sort of thing? It should open us … to the infinite, or whatever. To the sky, or whatever. To death, or whatever. All those things. All those things our great-great-grandparents might have understood.

 

Do you ever wonder how deeply dead we are? How far things have gone wrong? The fact that this poetry just zooms over my head. Over our heads, because I don’t think you understand it either.

It’s so beautiful. And too beautiful for us, for the likes of us. Once upon a time … once people would have set themselves to learn it by heart. To be able to quote this. To remember it all, line by line. And deliver it.

And look at us. We’re fallen. Desperately so. And yet the word, God, still means something. And the word, angels. And the words, angelic orders. The first lines …

I think we’re fallen. Desperately fallen. Because we don’t lament our fallenness. We don’t experience it, not really. It hasn’t reached us, in our depths.

We don’t have any depths. We’re unanchored. We’re drifting. But we don’t know it.

 

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

Is that what we’re doing: having fun?

 

The chapters of our love. What chapter are we on now?

 

It could all just end. If he finds out. Then that’ll be it. We’ll never see each other again. It could be snatched away at any moment. How precarious. He could have followed me here. He could be looking up at this window now, wondering which number flat it is.

 

I keep talking about you to his friends. Our friends. All of them are so old. So much older than I am.

What do you tell them?

About my new gay best friend.

 

I can’t stand the deception anymore.

Really?

So I told him everything.

And then what?

He smashed things up. It was quite impressive really. I didn’t know he had it in him.

How soap-opera-y.

So this is the last time we’ll ever see each other. This is goodbye.

I think I should be allowed a goodbye fuck.

You’re shameless.

It had to end sometime, didn’t it?

This’ll be good for you. You can meet someone else.

These are the most clichéd lines. Why are we speaking clichés? It’s painful.

Are you going to miss me?

Don’t say stupid things.

 

I won’t be able to save you from philosophical gravity anymore. From high-minded seriousness. I’m not serious enough, that’s the problem.

So, what did we learn? What was the great lesson? What can we take from this? What next? Fuck. Nothing’s ever going to make sense. Closure. Is that what we need?

So we’re actually not going to see each other again?

Maybe by accident. And then we’ll be embarrassed. What will we say? What did we ever say?

You’ll still have to write your book about afternoons. Our afternoons. Your philosophy of fucking in the afternoon. Laughter.

 

We could host dinner parties. We could drive to visit friends …

What friends do we have?

… Spend long nights with our besties.

What besties would we have?

 

You should write a memoir.

Now you’re joking. A memoir of what?

Of nothing happening. Do they teach you to write about nothing – about nothingness – in philosophy?

 

And your husband, head of it all … It’s his empire … I liked his three-piece suit. It gives him some distinction. Is that why you went for him?

The question is why I went for you.

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

No, actually. Nothing like that.

And his northern accent. And his easy going manner.

 

What conclusion have we come to?

That lust is all. That fucking trumps all. Is that it? The desire to fuck. The addiction to each another.

There’s a whole world of people out there, but only you will do. You’re the only one for me. The only one.

The only other one, anyway.

 

My husband’s an enthusiast. He thought it was a good idea, the philosophy meets organisation management thing. A cross fertilization. Exploring synergies.

How can you use these words? Without irony. Without quote marks. Why’s everything supposed to be so adaptable? Why is everything supposed to plug into everything else?

 

The management styles of your husband. The organisational management style.

 

The sea’s so far out. Let’s walk out there. Let’s see how far it out it’s gone.

 

Everyone’s gone mad from low tide. From this extra low tide. Will there be an extra high tide now? Will Cullercoats essentially flood?

 

Piles of seaweed, rotting. Flies.

I that flostam? Is that what flotsam looks like? How do you tell it apart from jetsam?

 

The tide’s out. Life’s out. And we’re just stranded. Nothing has any meaning – any context. Nothing’s borne by anything. It’s just deposited. Just left here. 

 

Are there whales out there? Or at least dolphins. You can see seals up at St Mary’s lighthouse.

What do they do?

Lie there, fatly.

 

Everything’s wheeling. The clouds are wheeling. The gulls are wheeling.

 

Is it low tide? High tide? I can never work out the tides.

I think it has an effect on mood. This is a high tide mood. Or a low tide one, I can tell.

 

Those guys with metal detectors. What are they looking for? What are they hoping to find?

 

There comes a dog. Hello, dog. What do you want, dog? Where do you stand on animals, philosopher?

What would it be worth to write your magnum opus? If the devil offered you a deal, what then? Would you accept? Your eternal soul for writing something of significance? Something that would save your name from oblivion. That would let you rise above the human herd. That would let you have a thought that was all your own. Would you do it?

 

Does it actually matter to you how people knew your magnum opus was a magnum opus? Like, accepted all at once as a major work in the field? Or would you be happy for it be a slow burn? A cult favourite? Something shared among the ones really in the know – the cognoscenti. The philosophical elite. Imagine: you’d be a philosopher’s philosopher.

 

You want the way to be clear so you can try to write your magnum opus. You’ve cleared away the obstacles. You’ve no excuse. You have your job. The years open ahead of you. Time to begin your major work, your life’s work. What you’ll be known for.

What if you can’t write it, do you ever wonder that? What if you’ve got nothing to say?

What will be your consolation prize in life, if you can’t do it? What will you get for being a runner-up? Will you disappointed in yourself? If you never quite make it, I mean. When will you give in? Give up?

The theologians are falling, one by one. The theologians are giving up. The theologians are in despair – total despair. The theologians are losing confidence. They haven’t got an idea in their heads. And all since they were moved to chemical engineering.

 

Moving theology to chemical engineering. Look what it did to them! A deliberate attempt at demoralisation. They’re teaching in laboratories, for God’s sake. They have to align their strategic plans with chem eng strategic plans.

It’s knocked the theology out of theology. And God knows, the theologians were scared enough for their futures. This is a godless world! And the theologians tried their best to devise theologies for a godless world.

Theologies without theology! Theologies without God! Ingenious! Brilliant! But was it enough to save them?

Every day, the compromise. Every day, living what we should not live. What should not be acceptable to live.

Every day, the contract is broken. The social contract. The existence contract. The ontological contract. The life and death contract.

Every day, we learn it anew: that we should not bother. That we should not be alive.

Every day, trying to rise up against the fatality. Trying to protest the fatality. And falling again, because of the fatality.

 

We want to die for keeps. We want to perma-die.

 

Nothing ever rises to apocalypse. The world never just bursts spontaneously into flame. The world itself can’t be bothered to end. The universe limps on.

 

We haven’t reached the right level of hatred.

We don’t hold ourselves in sufficient tension with what things are.

 

Hatred should be a purifying blast, like when Cyclops takes off his glasses in X-Men. There’s a way of destroying the world in hatred.

 

There’s a practice. An asceticism. There’s a whole ethos of world-disgust.

 

Hatred’s preparatory. It’s a making way.

For what?

For love – don’t you see?

 

They’ll send their secret police. They’ll open the new concentration camps. They’ll beat us. Extract confessions. They’ll beat us. They’ll humiliate us, publically. They’ll inject their filth into us. They’ll pollute our bloodstreams. They’ll alter us. They’ll fuck with our genomes. Nothing will be enough for them but transhumanism. They’ll want us to be part of their new species.

 

They’re building underground bunkers – why? They’re spending billions to live underground. Why? What do they know what’s coming?

 

Why are they allowed to get away with this? Why are they permitted these grandiose plans? Their demonism?

Where’s the counter-force? Where’s the corrective? Where’s the evidence of God?

 

It’s their madness we’re infected with. It’s their madness that has sent the world mad.

And does it infect us, their madness? Has it touched us, too? Have we gone weird, gone mad?

 

New twists on demonism. New horrors. New perversions. New twistings. New tortures.

 

The nihilized world. The finished world.

 

The deepest nihilistic fall of the world.

 

It is necessary to hate the world.

 

An antichrist move – that’s what this is. It has all the fucking signs.

 

How much longer do we have to live?

Is this living? Does this count?

 

We got lost. On the way to where? Where were we supposed to be going?

 

We’ve stumbled across it. We found it.

Found what? The secret. The missing … link. The missing piece. What we forgot. What we forgot we forgot. And that we’ve found again.

 

We’re quotations. On the lips of God. No, on the lips of ‘God’. We quote. We repeat. We say it again – all the old stuff. All the archaic stuff.

 

Does the horror know itself as horror? Does it feel its own horror? Is it innocent, in its horrifyingness?

 

The urgency of the lack of urgency. The emergency of the non-emergency. The evil of the lack of obvious evil. The apocalypse of the non-apocalypse. This is how they’ll fool us. By making it appear so normal.

 

The cancer of the universe.

 

They’ve poisoned the sky. They’ve poisoned the air. They’ve poisoned the earth.

 

I’ve noticed a change in the quality of my despair.

Have you?

In its flavour. It’s not the same as it was.

 

Look, Cicero wanted to sabotage philosophy at the uni. She actually had an education. She actually knew things. They made her head of department. They actually gave philosophy a future. So she brought to her people who had none of these things. Just to let them fuck it up.

 

And the final move: was the organisational management move. The organisational management completion. Which Cicero foresaw in some way. Which she wanted.

It was the completion of the farce. The consummation of the nonsense. Which she unleashed in the first place! Which she set in motion!

 

Cicero, as destroyer. Cicero, as murderer. Cicero, as strangler. Cicero as impresario of disaster.

 

Maybe this is only the elaborate form of her suicide. This is the playing out of her, like, autodestruction.

 

The whole thing was staged, I reckon. She saw it all. She knew what was coming. It’s playing out just as she knew it would.

 

She knew the deepest truth. What philosophy is in this world. The only thing philosophy can be in this world. A farce – a total farce.

 

This is what she wanted. This was the long plan. This was her strategic plan.

The complete humiliation – of philosophy. By agreeing to its move to organisational management. The complete destruction – of philosophy.

Was it supposed to be some kind of dialectics? By bringing the worst, did she hope to bring the best?

 

Cicero as puppetmaster. Cicero as ringleader. Forget her helpless looks. Forget her alleged despair. The organisational management move is what she wanted.

And she’s made you – you – her successor. She’s made you head of department. That’s what’s really done it.

 

She can be so interested in you, so interested. She can turn to you, look at you, and make you feel like you’re the only person in the world. That she and she alone understands you. That she’s intuited just exactly who you are.

And then … she’ll turn away.

 

She tears strips from you. Leaves you raw.

She opens wounds that only she can heal.

 

She’ll appear to see right into you – your heart. She notices you. You get her unwavering attention.

 

She’ll seduce you – if you’re young and pretty. She’ll make you do things. It’s like hypnotism. And yet she sometimes give the sense of being so helpless. Needy even – and that only you can help her. How does she do that?

 

There’s something diabolical about her. Scheming. Devilish. Mephisotlean.

 

She’ll betray you. Sell you out. There’s a dreadful exhibitionism when she’s at her worst. A grandeur. A theatricality. But that was before her breakdown.

What breakdown? That’s just part of the theatre.

Wow. Wheels within wheels, right?

 

She’s retired, basically.

Why – she not very old.

I heard it was because she seduced some student. I heard it was because she made one kill herself.

 

She’s a powerful woman. A monster. Or she can be. But she can great charm. Of course she can. She’s all these things.

 

The move to organisation management is part of the end times. Part of the final humiliation.

 

It’s a kind of apostasy. Cicero signed us up for this. Why? Why? It’s a sublime act. Shrouded in mystery. It follows an apocalyptic logic. Understand this, and you’ll understand everything.

 

But I still want to believe in Cicero. Of course we do. Haven’t we looked up to her, all along?

She brought us here. She gathered us together. But why – just to wreck us? Just to destroy us? So perverse …

She knew what she was doing. It was deliberate destruction.

 

It’s our role to decode what’s happened. To unravel it. How are we going to do that?

We have to understand the logic. She’s set us a puzzle. Solve this, and we solve everything. We’ll understand our place in all things. Our role in it all. What we can do. How we can carry things forward …

 

We see it now. It’s clear to us. Cicero wanted to found a philosophical dept for the end of times. When philosophy could only appear in parody, as an inversion of what it was. So she brought us in – we idiots.

And we’re glad we know. Now it makes sense. Cicero wasn’t fooled by our mediocrity – not for a moment. By our triviality. By the pettiness of our concerns.

No one should have recruited us – of course not. No one should have brought us here – that’s obvious. Our role is to be laughable. To play our role in the parody. A farcical role.

 

We have a role. A farcical role, it’s true – but a role. A farcical role in a farcical time. And we’re perfect for it.

Cicero cast us – us. And who else could she have cast but us? We’re here to do parody philosophy. To busy ourselves with philosophy as farce. In organisational management – where else?

 

And Cicero has had to remove herself. She had to take extended leave or retire or whatever. In order to put us centre stage. And let you, X, become the new head of department. A parody head. A headless head. It’s beautiful. What could be more beautiful?

 

She set nihilism to work. Brilliant! A brilliant woman! It’s like performance art, or something.

 

And who are we, but puppets? Happy puppets – happy to have a job, any job. Glad to work somewhere, at least.

Our idiocy’s the point – we know that. Our mediocrity. We were never supposed to be anything other than idiotic. That’s what we’re here for. We have a role. And shouldn’t we be happy with that?

 

How to read Cicero’s silence? How to interpret it?

And yet the sense that her silence is the most important thing of all. That everything is to be read there. If we were to focus on it, concentrate on it, then all the secrets would be revealed. We’d understand who we were. That’s it, isn’t it?

 

Cicero knows who we are. What we’re for. Cicero understands our role, this close to the end. And now so do we.

 

Our apocalyptic role. Our apocalyptic community. But an apocalyptic of parody (a parody of apocalyptic?)

 

Part of the End will be a parade of nonsense. Of deformities and mutations. Not physical, but mental. There’ll be sports. Twistings. Human contortionists. Like in that Hieronymous Bosch painting. Like some carnival of the end.

 

Cicero knew. More – Cicero made it happen. It was Cicero’s idea. That’s the terrible secret. And the wonderful secret. Now we Understand. Now we See. We know what our role’s supposed to be.

 

The Secret is revealed – and what a Secret.

Cicero’s a show-woman. An impresario. She was the orchestrator, all along.

It’s a brilliant Entertainment, but for who? For God, maybe.

The whole thing, like some a court masque. The whole university was her stage. And no one understood but her. And now us …

 

And now she’s lapsed into catatonia. And alcoholism. Is that part of it, too? Did she anticipate that, in her strategic plan?

 

Is she merely pretending to have become alcoholic? Is it a deliberate ruse?

 

What’s she doing? Who’s she hiding from? Hasn’t X long suspect that she was some kind of MI5 agent. That she was some kind of spook?

 

It’s like in The Spy who Came in From the Cold. It’s deliberate. It’s a strategy. She’s just pretending to have gone awry. To have become alcoholic. It’s a ruse. It’s a disguise.

 

She’s not actually drunk. She’s actually sober. She’s gone beyond drunkenness. Into some strange new state. It’s a kind of sobriety – but a divine sobriety.

 

Hasn’t Cicero always presented herself a philosophical heretic? As a phenomenological heretic. As a critical theoretical heretic. As a poststructural heretic. Even as Gnostic – although, as she concedes, Gnosticism never actually existed.

 

Is this Cicero’s idea of a joke? A perfect joke. A total inversion. The punchline: you’ve become head of philosophy at a Russell Group university. You’re in charge.

We’re Cicero’s army. Cicero’s ragtag. Cicero’s band of … what?

We’re Cicero’s philosophers. We’re the people of Cicero.

Even though Cicero seems kinda brain-damaged. Even though Cicero’s not what she was …

 

Didn’t Cicero once say she was going to invent a new god? A new mythology? Didn’t she confide her theogonic ambitions to us? Her desire to consecrate and enact a new myth? Wasn’t it about engaging the Ungrund? About seething energies? About a blind, increate formlessness?

 

Didn’t Cicero once talk of the Urgrund? The Unground? The origin of all gods, and where gods are dissolved? Mythology’s all about god slaying and god making, isn’t that what she’s said?

 

That was what Cicero dreamt up when she as in the deepest and longest of academic meetings. When she was practically buried in academic meetings. When she nearly lost her mind in academic meetings.

 

A deeper crucifixion than the crucifixion. Beyond Jesus …

 

Didn’t Cicero speak of a headless deity without reason, without consciousness? Didn’t she speak of the decapitated Medusa, of Dionysus torn apart? Didn’t she speak of the exiled Typhon? Of the fallen Lucifer?

 

The sacrificial escalation of death: wasn’t that what Cicero was all about. Seen it in its horror and magnificence. Without hope of salvation, redemption or transcendence …

 

Cicero, starting some weird philosophy cult. Cicero and her cadre of very intense philosophy MA students. What’s she doing to them? Where is it heading? Inevitably to suicide. Inevitably to death. Of course! Cicero’s death-mad. Death-fascinated.

 

Cicero’s cadre.

MA students are impressionable. They were flattered. They liked the attention. Of course they did! They wanted to be part of something. Who wouldn’t? Cicero’s enthusiasm was contagious. Cicero was exciting, back then. Cicero was wild …

And when Cicero was in her cups. When Cicero went extreme. When Cicero was in the grip of an enthusiasm … What could they do but follow her?

 

Cicero was a rollercoaster, back then. She was up and down.

She spoke with her eyes closed, like an ecstatic. She spoke from the mysterium. Delivering secrets. Secrets of the end.

 

Cicero, founding an apocalyptic cult. A Gnostic cult.

 

Cicero’s a woman for the moment – the apocalyptic moment. When everything comes to a head. But she’s also a woman for the endless – for the never-beginning and the never-ending.

 

Cicero’s lectures to the postgraduates. And you know what postgraduates are like. How impressionable they are. How thought can infect them like a contagion. How they rise and fall with their lecturer’s enthusiasms.

And these Newcastle postgraduates … They’re fresh, raw. They haven’t seen it all before. They aren’t jaded.

Didn’t we know the dangers of putting Cicero in front of such a class? That cults would form …

A woman who sees things the way Cicero does. Who’s as unstable as Cicero. As half mad. As possessed by … what? The truth? The end?

 

Haven’t we, too, been caught up by Cicero’s enthusiasms? Haven’t we, too, found ourselves half mad, like her, madly drunk, like her. Reading this or that wild text. Forgotten texts.

Reading philosophy as prophecy. Reading apocalyptic theology. Reading the Gnostics, and Gnostic-influenced philosophers.

Hasn’t it seemed to us that Cicero had the Knowledge. The gnosis. The great Secret of all things? Hasn’t it seemed that way, whether or not Cicero had the Knowledge. Whether or not she possessed the gnosis.

 

Cicero’s threats to leave it all. The exodus. To make her departure. To live a simple life at the coast, she said. But how will she afford it?

Rumours of an inheritance. Rumours of a lottery win.

 

Fears that this will just be the path of Cicero’s destruction. Of Cicero’s ruin.

 

Philosophy’s the path Cicero’s chosen for her destruction. Who’s ever been in doubt of that?

 

That she doesn’t doubt herself, as we doubt ourselves. That she’s free of self-questioning, as we are never free of self-questioning. That she doesn’t second guess herself, as we always second guess ourselves. That she has no very British fear of pretension, as we are always fearful of being pretentious. That she is unapologetic about her belonging to the traditions of old Europe, as we can never take ourselves seriously as heirs and heriesses of the tradition of old Europe.

 

Rumours that Cicero is burnt out. That she flew too close to the philosophical sun. Rumours that Cicero’s a shell of herself. That she’s not the woman she was.

 

Didn’t Cicero talked of freedom hubs, of water culture, of hydroponics? Of getting off the grid? Of growing her own?

Didn’t Cicero buy up tins and tins of mackerel? Tomatoes? Whole sacks of pinto beans?

 

Cicero’s ready. She lives in constant preparation, constant readiness.

She’s vigilant. She’s watching. She’s keeping an eye out. A weather eye …

 

Who knows what’s happening inside Cicero’s head. Inside Cicero’s breast. Who knows about Cicero’s spiritual convulsions? About Cicero’s spiritual disturbance? About Cicero’s spiritual depths?

 

Who knows what’s happening in Cicero’s heart? Who knows what Cicero does all day?

 

We’re not qualified to understand her. We’d have to have the spiritual depths ourselves to understand her spiritual depths. And we don’t. We couldn’t do.

 

Cicero recruited us. Cicero plucked us from our provincial universities. Cicero summoned us here. Cicero scouted the conferences for the up and coming – and the right kind of up and coming: the desperate. The spiritually intense. The put upon. The cornered.

Cicero sought us out: the prospectless. The defeated – spiritually. The lower class. The bordering on resentful. The embittered. The skint. The all but down and out. Who’d never normally be given a lectureship at a Russell Group university.

We were the desperate – which she knew. Because she thought she could shape something from our desperation. Were the bitter – she knew that, too. Because she thought she could make something of our bitterness.

 

We are Cicero’s people. What’s she done to us? What has she made us into? Are we mad, like her? Have we been turned mad by her?

 

Did she see us as we were? Did she see herself in us? As junior version of her?

Did she take herself to be founding a philosophical school? Did she want to leave a legacy? Did she want to make sure there’d be others like her in the academy?

 

Did she see signs of brilliance in us? 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.

 

Cicero’s faith in us – is it entirely misplaced? Is she entirely deluded? Why did she recruit us – us? Why did she bring us to her adopted city?

She was already a philosopher gone rogue. A theologian gone dark. Did she want fellow rogues? Was that what she was looking for?

 

What was Cicero looking for?

Did she think she might bring us on? That we had potential. Potential!? God knows!

Have we disappointed her? Are we disappointing her now?

 

What plans she must have had for the dept. What hopes she must have had. Her teaching. Her research.

 

Did she see the future in us? Did she place her faith in us? In us!? Surely not. Wouldn’t that be a terrible judgement upon her.

Was it a blindspot in her sight? Had she just got us wrong? Or is she right about us, too? Does she something in us that we don’t see? Some … knowledge. Some capacity for gnosis.

That, if it were trained. If we followed her example. If we were brought on in the right way. If we engaged in a process of spiritual discipleship …

 

Has Cicero been teaching us all along, in her own way. Indirectly. Discreetly.

Has she been showing us a path? Shaping us?

 

She lifted us up. She brought us here. She made this possible – for us. For our kind.

Cicero’s undergone a phase change. She’s passed on to another level of life. She’s become … well, you’ll see.

 

Cicero’s paranoid. She believes she’s being watched. She believes everyone is being watched. And monitored. And surveilled.

 

Cicero’s gone further than we have.

 

Cicero’s beyond the uni now. Beyond philosophy, even.

 

Cicero’s virtually mute now. Since her renunciation. She hasn’t spoken for a while.

 

Cicero, opening dry lips. Looking at us from the depths of her sadness.

 

Did Cicero always know the way the uni was going? Hadn’t she predicted every move in advance? What’s her verdict? What’s the plan?

 

Cicero knows where it’s all heading.

 

Cicero, our leader in exile. Cicero, who closes her eyes when she speaks.

 

Cicero is persona non grata in the corridors of the uni. Cicero went entirely too far for the good people of the uni. They practically drove her out! Demanded her resignation!  They gave her extended leave instead. What does extended leave mean?

 

There are people who call Cicero far right. Who call her Nazi. Who call her a mad conspiracy theorist. Of course they do! Haven’t we all become far right? Haven’t we all become mad conspiracy theorists!

Cicero’s a dangerous thinker, that’s the thing. She makes thinking dangerous.

 

Cicero poisoned youth, they said. She was corrupting youth.

 

Cicero was always trying to turn the students away of the classroom. Send them into the streets. What about insurance! The university said. What about safety!

 

Cicero’s legendary pedagogy. Cicero’s educational anarchy. Cicero’s attempt to deprogramme the students. To deprocess them.

Cicero tried to produce independent thinkers. They never forgave her.

 

Cicero’s sabbatical. Her thinking time. Her research leave. She needs it! To cool off her head.

 

It’s an emergency! A uni state of emergency! Can they really take this kind of decision without consulting anyone? Do they have this kind of power? Can they really do whatever they want? Does the framework exist? Yes they can.

 

We need to resist – not legally. Not through the union. We can’t challenge the uni. No: philosophically. We need to stage a philosophical battle. And not just against our uni. Against all tyranny. We need to start a philosophical movement.

Well, Cicero – what would you advise?

 

This is an historic day! This is how our names will go down in history – well, philosophical history.

Laughter.

 

It’s what we needed all along: an enemy. Schmitt was right with his friend / enemy distinction. It’s very defining.

It’ll make us into something. We won’t be idiot lecturers, doing this and then that.

We have something to sharpen our thought-weapons against.

 

We have to understand what kind of battle this is. Its true dimensions. Its scope. Its spiritual angle. Its religious one. We won’t just dissipate our energies, not anymore.

 

We have to Prepare. Draw on all the resources of philosophy. And probably non philosophy. And anti philosophy. Summon all our forces.

 

Are we philosophers – real philosophers? Is that what we do? Maybe we’re something else? Anti philosophers, say.

Antiphilosophers? Haven’t the French already done that?

The French have done everything, those bastards.

 

A native philosophy – all of our own: that’s what we need. A British philosophy, God help us. Our version of European thought. What better?

We’ll make it our own. We won’t be playing catch-up anymore. This’ll be our thing. Our mission. We’ll follow our trajectory. This will be the making of us – as thinkers. As philosophers, or antiphilosophers, or nonphilosophers, or whatever.

 

No more inferiority complex. No more imposter’s syndrome. No sense of having arrived too late. No belatedness. No posthumousness. We’ll weaponize thought – all thought. Everything we’ve been trained in, however poorly.

 

A local struggle – a specific struggle. Yes! Yes!

All along, we needed a mission. A Cause. And now we have it: our Cause. This is what we’re going to do. This is how we’ll busy ourselves. That will magnetise our writings. Draw them together.

 

Now we have something to Do. Now we have something to busy ourselves with …

We’ll remake philosophy. Reshape it. We’ll draw on the powers of Europe.

 

Cicero’s experiments in distantiation. In dissociation. They’re quite deliberate. There are psychological states we can reach out here, at the coast. Philosophical states.

There can no more philosophy. No one can believe in philosophy. Just like no one can believe in God.

Call it a negative philosophy, then – like negative theology. Where it’s apophatic. Where it’s all about what it’s not.

Call it anti-philosophy.

*How can you be anti-philosophy? Philosophy’s, like, everything. Not to do philosophy is still to do philosophy – that’s the philosophical trap.

It’s all a trap.

 

Anti-philosophy. Someone French is bound to have thought of it in, like, 1912. They’re so far ahead.

Look it up.

Fuck, there’s loads of stuff on anti-philosophy. It was all the rage in France in the ‘70s.

Typical.

There’s some guy who gave up philosophy for … sailing. He’s written a whole treatise on it. sailing and antiphilosophy.

Wow.

We’re always too late. 

What about non-philosophy, then?

That’s taken – come on. There’s a whole school of non-philosophy. Don’t you know that?

What about hyperphilosophy?

That’s not bad …

How about ultraphilosophy. Surphilosophy … like surrealism. Where Sur means beyond.

People would be expecting things from us. Like, great things. We need to lower their expectations. They need to understand that this is philosophy in parody. Philosophy as a joke. Like a failure philosophy. A fuck up philosophy. A fuck ups philosophy. A philosophy for the fucked up. Philosophy that isn’t philosophy. That’s not quite philosophy. Not even anything.

Not even philosophy: that’s a name.

Do you think?

Not even philosophy … look that up.

 

Imagining it. A whole not-even-philosophy movement.

Would it mean we have do things? Like, work at anything? Run a not-even philosophy journal? A society? Hold conferences. Run some not even philosophy series for a publisher?

Fuck that. You shouldn’t have to do stuff if you’re not-even-philosophers. It should be like, slacker philosophy. Where it’s not about arguments, or theses, or positions, or being for or against anything.

What about ontology?

Not even that.

Metaphysics?

Not even that.

Ethics?

Not even that. Not even anything. Not even philosophy.

Just being lazy useless bastards, then.

It’s more like some suspension of philosophy: that’s how I  think of it. Where we lay down the usual philosophical tools.

Where we get drunk together, in other words.

No, not even that.

Where we hang out.

Not even that.

Where we don’t organise anything. Just sit on the fucking beach.

Maybe.

Would we become the latest thing? Would word spread through the more alert postgraduates? Through the more vibrant postdocs? For MA students looking for something really transgressive?

Would blurred photos of us circulate on the net?

 

We should start some new philosophical movement. Like, coast philosophy. Philosophy of beaches and off shore breezes and morning fog. Philosophy that’s never quite in focus.

But it’s not really philosophy then, is it?

Exactly – it’s not yet philosophy. Not even philosophy.

So it’s philosophy-lite?

Maybe. But with all the pathos. With, like, heavy pathos. With self-loathing. With self-castigation. With the cleverest variations on self-destruction. With a special emphasis on picking the scabs. On digging the wounds a little deeper. On hating ourselves and each other. Quite systematically.

Brilliant idea. Where will it lead?

Nowhere. But joyfully nowhere. Because it’s not even philosophy.

 

Not even philosophy’s like the opposite of applied philosophy. Of useful philosophy. Of philosophy that wears the muzzle. Of underlabourer philosophy. That makes itself subservient.

 

A philosophy of disgust. At doing philosophy. At pretending to do philosophy. Or anything. Of pretending to be philosophers. Or being anything.

Because we’re against being. Against existing …

 

We’re just enjoying self-hatred. And the hatred of everything. In some vague apocalypticism. Some millennialism, without religion. Throwing all these big words about, idly. And smoking. And not being fucking productive.

 

Living in the great lull. Between the knowledge that the disaster’s coming and the disaster not yet being here. Between the sea going out, the open beach, and the incoming tsunami.

We’re in the time of the end, knowing that there’s nothing we can do about the end. Like, we can’t philosophise about it.

 

What has not even philosophy to do with the void? The void is the real object of thought. The void is what’s there when you’re not looking for it. It’s what you see from the corner of your eye.  When you’re idle. When you’re distracted. When you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be. When you’re just woolgathering. Gazing out the window, or whatever.

The void … it’s what there is instead of an object to think. Something serious to focus on. The void is what appears when reality’s, like, thinning out. Here at the coast, for example. Where it’s not even a city.

 

The ‘not even’ is a beautiful category … did we come up with it by ourselves. Look it up … see if some French type had the idea …

Georges Bataille said he was not even a communist.

That bastard … so he was on to it … But no one’s developed it since then. Good – that’s something.

 

Look at us. We’re a disgrace. Because we don’t know what to do, now we’ve got our jobs. We don’t know what to do with them. We have enough integrity not to try to be careerist. No – scratch that. It’s not a question of integrity. It’s … can’t be botheredness. It’s … lack of capacity.

We could do it if we tried.

Bataille would approve.

Would he? I don’t we fuck enough for him to approve. We don’t hang out at brothels. Have you ever been to a brothel?

 

We should write a manifesto. What would it say? The Centre for Not Even Philosophy – do you think the uni would allow that?

You can be our president, X. You’re in charge of spreading our doctrine. Like syphilis.

 

This is our act of rebellion. Fuck it, it’s not even rebellion. It’s lazing about. It’s frolicking. Its whatever we fucking want it to be, sounds like.

What will they take from us? Our non-productivity. Our idleness. Our worklessness. Our empty time. Our staring out of windows time. Our wandering nowhere time. Our being suspended time. Our dissipation time.

 

To shut down our consciousness. Our awareness. And our self-consciousness. And our self-awareness.

 

How hard it is to be human. How hard, still, to be human. And we’re the last humans left, pretty much.

 

We’ve been too alert for too long. We need rest. We need to stop the engine. Stop the wheels turning.

 

Is there something wrong with us, or something right with us? Have we taken a wrong turn, or a right one? Is this a cul-de-sac or an opening?

Where have we lead ourselves? By instinct. By cussedness. By stupidity. By antinomalism. By sheer, blind luck.

 

We hold our gaze on the future. We know what’s coming. Prophets, of a sort. Heralds, of a sort. Apocalypticists.

 

Dread … is that what we feel? It’s deeper than that. Ur-dread. World-dread. Deeper-than-the-world dread. Existence dread.

Dread: that word. That heavy word. Dread: is that what we feel? Is it heavier than we are? Are we crushed by dread?

 

We’re specialists in this. In feeling these things. This is what we do. We’re made for spiritual environments that would crush anyone else. We’re made for spiritual climates that no one else could endure. We read the darkest books. We entertain the nightmarish thoughts. We’re used to nihilism. To Gnosticism.

 

We speak fluent apocalypse. We’re acclimatised. Accustomed. Like people who live at high altitude. We’re used to the abyss. Used to the pits.

 

We’re happiest in philosophies of the abyss. Of the greater darkness.

Among inhuman philosophies. Anti-philosophies. Ugly philosophies, from which you want to turn away.

We live in extremity. In mental extremity. In psychic extremity. We endure these … states. Like some kind of training. Like some mad, dark asceticism.

 

We know black waves will break. We know the black tide is coming in. We know black skies are coming. We’re ready.

They’re coming for us. For our kind. The new secret police – the new alphabet agencies.

Why would they bother with us? Haven’t they got other things to bother with?

It’s an algorithm. They’re tireless. All the lampposts out there, listening out for conversation about forbidden things. Searching for suspect words and phrases. Listening out for potential enemies of the state. Trying to prevent future crimes. Future criminals. Trying to prevent forbidden talk.

Everything we’re saying. Everything we’re doing – logged, tracked, analysed. We’re being tracked. Scored …

What do you think our social credit scores are? Do you think we’re doing well?

Laughter.

Come on, what can the algorithms do with talk about anti-philosophy and suicide? Not very much, I would suggest. I don’t think AI will be bothering with us.

 

We should just let ourselves be poisoned. Just give up. What do you suppose is in this beer? Are you going to stop drinking beer?

The poison’s everywhere. We know that. It falls in the rain. It blows in the air. It’s in our food. The water we drink.

Don’t pretend we can escape this. Don’t act as though we’re exempt.

 

They’re monitoring our electro-magnetic fields. They know all about that stuff. Our electro-magnetic auras. It’s a wavelength battle. It’s a spiritual battle. A very subtle form of warfare.

They’re microwaving us. We know that. They’re frying us. Our thoughts are microwaved thoughts. Our thoughts are fried thoughts.

 

Are we allowed to think these thoughts? Are we allowed to say these things? Is this, like, a smart pub? Is this smart beer? Surveillance beer? It might be. Are those surveillance beer mats? Are our pint glasses covered in sensors? What isn’t covered in sensors?

Are there microscopic drones, like, swarming around? What thought crimes have we committed today? God. Philosophy’s a thought-crime.

Fuck that. Philosophy’s complicit. Academic philosophy, anyway.

That’s why we need anti-philosophy, right?

Anti-philosophy … isn’t that just more philosophy? We don’t want any more philosophy.

 

The earth is poisoned. The very earth. The soil. The rocks. Probably. The mantle …

Can you poison the mantle?

All the way down to the earth’s core: poisoned. And all the way up, too. Through the atmosphere, the stratosphere. All the other -spheres. And space, too.

Can space be poisoned?

 

It’s all thick with poison. We’re all choked with poison. It’s amazing we‘re still alive.

Our tissues, thick with poison. Our lungs, thick with poison. Our livers, busily trying to process the poison.

We’re poisoned people. Poisoned thinkers. Poison slops through our veins. Poisons slide through our… mucus membranes. Poison’s being pumped through our lymph nodes.

The poison brews inside us. Slops around. In our bones, probably. In our ligaments. In our cartilage. There’s poison in our lips. Our earlobes. There’s poison in our retinas. We stare out of poison. There’s poison in our speech. In everything we say. There’s poison in our brains. These are the thoughts that poison thinks. It’s a wonder we’re still alive.

Are we still alive?

We’re just perpetuating the poison. We’re just poisoning more things. We’re spreading the poison. We can’t help it. What isn’t poisoned? What’s, like, the last unpoisoned thing?

The sun, maybe. The sun would just burn away poisons.

Do you think?

Have we poisoned all of space?

We’re trying, I’m sure. Have we poisoned all the wavelengths? What aren’t we killing?

There’s poison in everything we write. All our words and sentences. There’s poison in our thoughts. What would we be like if we hadn’t been poisoned?

Only the poisoned can think the poison. That’s what I think. Only the poisoned can write from the depths of the poison.

 

I think we should just let the poison run its course. Stop resisting. Just sink down. We should die this death. Just let ourselves die. Stop resisting.

And then what?

And then … who knows? And then be resurrected.

 

There’s stuff you can do something about, and stuff you can’t. You can’t escape the poison. You can’t escape anything. It’s just … fatalism.

Accept it: we’re being destroyed. And we can’t do anything about it. Babies poisoned in the womb. Children, growing up poisoned.

Why resist? Just give in. They’ve won, we’ve lost. A toast to them: well done, guys. Bravo, fuckers. The world’s yours. We won’t resist. We won’t do anything. We’ll just kill ourselves to get out of your way. We’ll slash our own throats. We’ll spare you the trouble.

We’re tired of resisting. We don’t want to put up a fight anymore. We’re tired of fighting. Just give us instructions. We’ll do as you say. Just say what you want, and we’ll do what we want.

You’ve won. Accept your victory and the spoils of victory. The world is yours. The earth, the poisoned earth is yours. The skies, the poisoned skies are yours. You’re fucking welcome.

 

What I want to say to them: surely you can’t want perpetual horror. Surely you can’t want utter destruction. Surely this is all supposed to lead somewhere. Surely it’s all about your utopia. Surely all this was a means, and there’s a goal ahead. Surely this is all for something. It isn’t, isn’t it?

Show us, then. Show us where it’s leading … What was it for, the great poisoning?

 

Carried along. Borne along. Living out our petty lives. Our so called lives. Living our half lives and quarter lives …

 

We should just strangle ourselves. Right away! Wouldn’t that resolve everything? And leave our poisoned corpses.

 

We don’t live and breathe as we’re supposed to. This is not a world in which we can live and breathe, not anymore. It’s not a world for us. It’s not a home. It affords no dwelling.

 

Corpses lie all around us. And we’re corpses, too. We’re walking corpses. Staggering corpses. We’re only alive in death, thick with death.

 

We can’t even be corpses. We can’t just lie there, all dead. There’s still a little life in us. We still stagger about. We still … live, if this is called living. If we can call this life. God. We have no choice in the matter, or any matter. We weren’t consulted. No one thought to ask us.

 

These are our new lives. Our new monitored lives. Our new tracked-and traced lives. Our new battery hen lives. Our new micro-surveilled lives. Our new watched-at-all-times lives. Our new listened-to-ceaselessly lives. The algorithm search engines checking our every sentence. Watching out for thought-crimes. Reading our thoughts … is that possible?

 

Come on, you’ve won, you’ve humiliated us. We’re humiliating ourselves. We’re doing it for you. We’re carrying out the devil’s work – your work. You sentenced us to death by humiliation. Very well, we’ll carry out the humiliation. We’ll do what you want. We barely need telling.

We humiliate ourselves – it’s a reflex. As though it were pre-programmed, and perhaps it is. Destroying ourselves is what you wanted. And the only honourable thing to do. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. But we always hold back from the final destruction. We never actually take our own lives We’re always playing chicken. Always feigning death. Feigning humiliating ourselves for the final time.

As if we expect to be saved. As if we thought something was going to save us. As if we thought things might change. Our sentence might be overlooked. That we could just get away with living a little longer. Taking a few more breaths. We thought we might be spared for a little while longer …

 

Shame … shame at being alive in this world … shame at living on in this world … shame at being human in this new phase of post-human life … Shame because we know what’s going on … we know what’s happening … there should be no excuse …

 

Our base, poisoned animality. Our sunken, poisoned bodies. Our filth … which doesn’t look like filth. Our abasement, which doesn’t look like abasement … our defiled humanity … We’re ready to die. We actually want to die … We’re perfect would-be martyrs … we’re still alive, and that’s their revenge.

 

What they’ve done with the world. The making-prison of the world.

At least we know it wasn’t always like this. That it wasn’t always a  prison. That we weren’t always confined. That this isn’t how it had to be.

 

They won the battle. And now they’re letting us live on, to see their victory. To live out our humiliation.

An invisible humiliation. An invisible martyrdom. That no one really understands. Because they don’t remember the old reality. They’ve adjusted fully to the new reality. They’re perfectly at home in the new world.

They’ve forgotten how things used to be. They don’t feel compromised. They’re pragmatic. They’re getting on with things. They’re living life as best they can. They’re making the best of it all.

Impressive in its way. Impressive really. Routinised killing. Everyday killing. Disguised as everything else killings. They’ve normalised mass death. They’ve made democide look like business as usual. And the whole world’s in denial.

 

Surely they couldn’t be bothered to kill us. Surely we’re no threat. Surely we’re not going to do anything. Make anything happen.

 

Our secret struggle. Our secret politics – our anti-politics. All the things we’re against … everything, really. The whole world. The world as such.

Can we be imprisoned for that?