Author: Lars Iyer

At least we have the intensity. At least we’ve kept our intensity. At our best! When we’re drunk!

At least we remember who we were, in our part time years. What we were reduced to.

At least we still pick at the scars.


We saw how things Worked, back then. We saw what was Really Going On. The Truth of the University: we saw that. The Truth of everything, the Truth of world!


We want the end, we want death, postgraduates. Our hope is for the end, for the destruction. There’s nothing in this world for us.

We must separate ourselves from this world. Live against it. Turn our faces away.

The only things that cheer us: signs of the end. Even though we know that the end will never come.


A kind of cancer of creation. No: creation as cancer.


Disgust reminds us. Disgust takes us back to what we should feel. What we should know. But only disgust for everything.

It’s not about this or that terroir, but about terroir as such. It’s not about the minerality of this soul, or these specific weather conditions. It’s about the earth in general. As such!

It’s not about this polluted terroir or that one. It’s not about this but of stinking earth. But of all earth.

It’s not about this poison, but the poison of it all. It’s not about this lie, but the Lie of existence. The Lie that we’re made to live.

Livia wanted to pour herself out for us. To pour out her department. her department was a libation. She wanted to destroy what she made. No – to sacrifice it. To offer it up.


Drink this is remembrance of me, that’s what Livia’s saying. Where remembrance isn’t just mourning. It’s conjuring up her presence. It’s placing herself amongst us. Here she is, in this wine. Disgustingly.

The wine enables our communion. It’s what brings us together. Just like those early Christians in the Roman empire. The body of Livia, right?


Judge her by her fruit – this is her fruit. This is wine made from her grapes – from Livia-endorsed grapes. And of course it’s disgusting. What else can it be but disgusting?


Are you saying Livia lactated this wine. Yuck. That she squeezed it out and bottled it up?

Don’t be disgusting. Livia always hated being a mammal, she said. She hated the mammalian. She hated all that fur and cuteness and lactation.


So this is Livia’s milk – the black milk of Livia?


Livia never wanted to suckle us. Except with poison, which is, like, anti-milk.


Ah, the poisoned teats of Livia. Like that woman who tried to poison Krishna but suckling him with a poisoned breast.


Mother’s like the bad breast, and Livia’s the good one.


We’re still suckling on Livia’s teat.

Don’t use the word teat. Don’t say, teat.

It’s time we were weaned. Stand on our own two feet. No longer with Livia’s milk around our mouths.

Jeez – disgusting!

Antinomian women: that’s where it’s at. The women who will save me. The women who will yank me up from the mire. I only have to think of them to be … lifted up, somewhat. Rescued, a little. I don’t feel quite so alone.


Women are, like, programmed to be agreeable. To be kind and agreeable and soft and mild. And if you’re antinomian, you’re a threat. You’re a witch. You’re an outcast.

And women are bitches, for all heir agreeableness. They’d be the first to denounce you, if you’re a threat. To have you burnt you at the stake.

You know how it is, philosopher – or perhaps you don’t. So much easier for you.


Is that what you thought Livia was: an antinomian woman?

No question if that. Livia was thoroughly antinomian. Livia loved being antinomian. I’m sick of women, she used to say.

But she wasn’t sick of you.


A whole series of studies of my antinomian women. Perhaps that will be my life’s work.


Antinomian women are so much more interesting than antinomian men. They’ve done so much more to free themselves from all that feminine agreeableness. That desire to please.


I think Livia’s the most antinomian woman of all.

Its your job to write about her. It takes an antinomian woman to write on antinomian women.  

I think you’ll find that’s your job, Shiva. You and your idiotbuch.


Livia was susceptible. Livia had crushes. Remember Herwig.

Who could forget Herwig?

She was part of that think tank, wasn’t she? Not sure what she was doing in Tyneford. Not sure how Livia met her?

Of course the right are so seductive now. The right has this forbidden allure. Aren’t we all just sick of the left? And leftish women. All that censorship and cancellation and self-righteousness … and calling everyone fascist. All the things we’re not supposed to think. All these forbidden ideas.


So antinomian women are all right wing now?

Think of Herwig.

Herwig was pure antinomianism. She reveled in being disliked by everyone. I mean, she was fierce. She might as well have carried a whip.

You’re just waiting for your Leni Riesensenthal. Sure I am …


Why are you so credulous? Why do you have to justify everything Livia did? Why do you have to give meaning to it all? Livia was a bitch who like to play practical jokes. She enjoyed our innocence because it made us gullible. And she loved our stupidity because it let her lead us up the garden path. That’s it.

I’m on the yellow brick road out of Gnosticism. With Susan Taubes as my spiritual animal.


Do you think you might be a genius, Gazelle? Is it Gazelle among the midwits? A 130 IQ, among the 110s?


You’ve got too much hope, Gazelle. I’m sure that’s what Livia knew about you. That you’d fight your way to the end of the night and go beyond. That’s why she split up with you – you were the one who were going to get away.

She split up with me, remember.

Because she knew what was coming.

I wasn’t stupid enough, in her eyes. I couldn’t be patronised in the same way as you guys. I didn’t feel quite as inadequate. And I wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to cultivate. That was you, Shiva.


The jaws of the world will close over me – that’s what Livia said. But they won’t close over you, Shiva.


You just want everyone to give up and just sit there in their idiocy, waiting for lightning to strike, or whatever.


Your literariness. Your Hinduness. Your intelligence-in-stupidity. Isn’t that what she called it? Your pathos. Your depth of feeling. Your natural horror. The way you couldn’t bear your creaturely condition. I found my way out of Gnosticism by reading Susan Taubes. But you – you’re still in it.


You can’t just fantasise your way out of Gnosticism. Fantasy doesn’t defeat Gnosticism.


I wasn’t stupid enough, in her eyes. I couldn’t be patronised in the same way as you guys. I didn’t feel quite as inadequate. And I wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to cultivate. That was you, Shiva.


The jaws of the world will close over me – that’s what Livia said. But they won’t close over you, Shiva.


You just want everyone to give up and just sit there in their idiocy, waiting for lightning to strike, or whatever.


Your literariness. Your Hinduness. Your intelligence-in-stupidity. Isn’t that what she called it? Your pathos. Your depth of feeling. Your natural horror. The way you couldn’t bear your creaturely condition. I found my way out of Gnosticism by reading Susan Taubes. But you – you’re still in it.


You can’t just fantasise your way out of Gnosticism. Fantasy doesn’t defeat Gnosticism.

I wasn’t stupid enough, in her eyes. I couldn’t be patronised in the same way as you guys. I didn’t feel quite as inadequate. And I wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to cultivate. That was you, Shiva.


The jaws of the world will close over me – that’s what Livia said. But they won’t close over you, Shiva.


You just want everyone to give up and just sit there in their idiocy, waiting for lightning to strike, or whatever.


Your literariness. Your Hinduness. Your intelligence-in-stupidity. Isn’t that what she called it? Your pathos. Your depth of feeling. Your natural horror. The way you couldn’t bear your creaturely condition. I found my way out of Gnosticism by reading Susan Taubes. But you – you’re still in it.


You can’t just fantasise your way out of Gnosticism. Fantasy doesn’t defeat Gnosticism.


I wasn’t stupid enough, in her eyes. I couldn’t be patronised in the same way as you guys. I didn’t feel quite as inadequate. And I wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to cultivate. That was you, Shiva.


The jaws of the world will close over me – that’s what Livia said. But they won’t close over you, Shiva.


You just want everyone to give up and just sit there in their idiocy, waiting for lightning to strike, or whatever.


Your literariness. Your Hinduness. Your intelligence-in-stupidity. Isn’t that what she called it? Your pathos. Your depth of feeling. Your natural horror. The way you couldn’t bear your creaturely condition. I found my way out of Gnosticism by reading Susan Taubes. But you – you’re still in it.


You can’t just fantasise your way out of Gnosticism. Fantasy doesn’t defeat Gnosticism.


You were never part time enough. Your part-timeness never drove you crazy enough. You weren’t sick with precarity.


These times belong to the eschatologically mad. To the sent-mad.

You have to be destroyed. Broken in two.

The only thing that can be done for philosophy is to arrange a proper funeral.

A funeral for philosophy! With wine!

I don’t like being susceptible. I don’t want to do what my body tells me. I don’t want to be what nature wants me to be.

I don’t want to desire. I don’t want sex. I don’t want its pleasures – what it wants to give me. I don’t want its gratification – what it allows me. What it grants me.

I don’t want to feel what I’m supposed to feel. I don’t want to be subject to this. I don’t want to be its victim.


I don’t want to be its prisoner. I don’t want to be managed by nature. Given treats. Made to feel good. I’m not some domestic animal.

So be a wild animal. Let yourself fuck. What’s wrong – don’t you like me? Aren’t you attracted to me? Isn’t it Gnostic enough? Dangerous enough? Isn’t it wild enough? Am I not philosophical enough?


You just want to destroy. To tear things up.

You’d only respect someone who hated everything. Who was the enemy of everything just like you’re … supposed … to … be.


Do you hate yourself, philosopher? Do you hate yourself for this? For being just like anyone else. Why don’t you give up – accept it? Just be like everyone else.

What makes you so special? What set you apart? Mr Anti nature. My loather of it all. My hater. Where does it get you, your hate? You’ll just end up some miserable, unhappy incel.


What happened to you? What made you like this? And don’t say, philosophy.

How did you become so fucked in the head? Why have you got to make life so complicated?


It doesn’t add up. Go with the flow.

I want to go against the flow. Oppose the flow. Resist the flow. Do anything but fucking flow.


The fact is you’re an animal, just like everyone else is an animal. You feel lust. You want to fuck. Be fucked. You want romance.

This is our lowest hour – does that mean it will be our highest one? Here, in the depths, will we reach the heights? Will we Think, capital, T? Will genius strike us? Genius, like a bolt of lightning.

And is that how the campus will be destroyed: by a bolt lightning? Will lightning crack the campus – every part of it? Will the towers fall?

The paras had no sky. How did they cope?

They had an earth-sky. They had the sky of boulder clay.

They had no light.

They had mould light.

They had no food.

They had mould. Very good for you, mould. Like blue cheese mould. Other mould. And they fermented stuff. They’re very into fermented food. It’s very good brainfood.

Schools of self despising philosophers, like the Shakers – dedicated to their abolition. Schools of Hatred. Schools of Disgust. Schools of Appalled Philosophers. Schools that teach the arts of living in Hell – of so-called living. The arts of living against the world.

Have we reached it: the uttermost of world disgust?

Are we, like, disgusted to the max? Have we moved from disgust with wine to disgust with everything? Have we generalised? Have we abstracted? Have we discovered the true object of disgust? Do we know, at least, what it means to be better than being? To live otherwise than existence?


So what happens now we’ve reached our great gnostic moment? What’s supposed to happen? Now we’ve reached perfect Gnosticism? Now that we’re finally against everything?

I mean, what are we left with? The world’s still the world. The ruins are still the ruins.