Author: Lars Iyer

Ontological part timers: that’s who we were. We weren’t meant for a full time role. We were back ups – at best. Ancillaries. Spares. We were nothing in and of ourselves.


Understudies. Secondaries. Replacements. That’s who we were. We didn’t deserve to be front of house. We didn’t deserve star billing.

Which is why Livia thought we deserved star billing. Which is why Livia placed us front of house. We didn’t deserve to become full time lecturers – which is why Livia thought we deserved to become full time lecturers. We should never have been given a chance – which is why, of course, Livia gave us a chance.

Not out of a sense of justice, of course. But out of perversity. Because she just had to do otherwise. She couldn’t resist doing otherwise.


We were part timers of spirit. We were casual staff of the soul. It was natural to us to be second best. To lag behind.

But we knew our place! We knew our rank in the great chain of academic being! We were humble, in our way. We never pretended to be what we were not. We never put on airs and graces.

We were modest – as we should have been. We were second raters – as had been shown. By all the measures. By any academic standards.

Bottom of the rung: that’s what we were. Scrapings swept from the factory floor. Like reconstituted meat. Made of this and that. A reading of Hegel there, of Freud there. And all compacted together, scrappily …


It wasn’t meant to be: our elevation. It wasn’t in the order of things. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. Anyone could see that. We could see it. It didn’t have to be explained to us.

We’d already found our part-time level. Our hourly-paid rung on the ladder. We knew where we belonged. We knew what we were.

Cap-doffers. Who paused for breath when a great academic went by.


There was a reason why things were as they were. There was a logic. An institutional wisdom. That allocated a role to all. That gave us all our part to play. And ours was a part time part.

Everyone had their role in the great academic Production. We could all take our bow when the time came.


Things were as they were for a good reason. There was no point getting uppity. Getting above ourselves.

And it was part of our role to know our role. Part of the way things were. Were we among the brightest and best? Of course not. Were we academic players, university movers and shakers? No, and again no.

You could see it in our physiognomy, probably. In the shape and size of our skulls. You could do genetic tests, and it would be clear. Handwriting analysis. Iris scans. Measure the relative length of our fingers. All that kind of stuff. These things aren’t hidden …

Let’s not pretend. There are hierarchies for a reason. Not everyone can do everything. There’s a role for academic drawers of water and hewers of wood. And that was our role.

But Livia had to overturn things.


It’d just be wasted on us, any opportunity. We’d simply squander it by trying to drink away our impostor syndrome.

We didn’t have the  intelligence – obviously. Raw IQ: we were lacking in that. Let alone the CVs. Let alone the references.

We never had the confidence. The bonhomie. The swagger. The natural air of authority. We didn’t look as though we should run modules and mark work and all that. We had our place on the bell curve.

We wouldn’t be happy in an exalted role. We’d panic. We’d freeze. We wouldn’t want it.


No one ever predicted great things of us. Our supervisors, for instance. Our examiners – internal and external. Our lecturers as undergraduates. As MA students.

Not much was expected of us. We were part of the churn, that’s all. Part of th slop. Part of what needed to be processed. The university was a numbers game, after all. And they needed numbers! Warm bodies! And at least we had those.

Our peers didn’t look to us with admiration. We didn’t startle them with our brilliant comments in seminars. We never got 90% in an essay. We were never encouraged to try to publish part of our MA dissertation, or turn our PhD theses into books.

We were always low on the bill at the conferences. Never headliners. Never keynoters. And we never would be. We’d make up the numbers. We were there for the headcount. 


It’s like good king Wenceslas … the poor man at his gate, the rich man in his castle. The hourly paid lecturer, all busy, the star researcher in his study … it’s only right. It’s a question of bearing. Of accent. It’s a matter of how we come across. Of body language, probably. These things aren’t hidden.


Shouldn’t we be teaching in Further Education? Shouldn’t we be schoolteachers, really? Shouldn’t we be carers? The country is crying out for carers. And schoolteachers. And Further Education teachers, probably. Our kind are needed elsewhere. Our skills, such as they are.


We’re British – this is how we do things? Hundreds of years of natural order. A few shake-ups now an again, but in general things are as they should be.

Things are settled. Things are in their place. It works at the level of instinct – the deepest level. It’s a matter of deep history. Deep culture. We just know how things ought to be.

It’s all very well coming from Central Europe or wherever and throwing a bomb into the midst of it all. Some chaos agent bullshit. There are orders and hierarchies for a reason. Things aren’t as they are by chance.


A protest against Livia. For saving us! For lifting us out of the mire! Against her – we’re churls, ingrates – for upsetting the natural order.

Livia got it wrong, we want to say. We didn’t ask for this, we want to protest. We don’t think we deserve these jobs. This station!

We’re not up to it – we admit it. But never pretended to have been up to it. We didn’t make the grade – of course not.

We’ve been overpromoted. Overexalted. Overextended. That we’ve been lifted too high. Overelevated. That we – we – should be representing European philosophy. That we – we – should talk about ourselves as European philosophers

Shouldn’t we be able to sue Livia? For upsetting the balance. Our sense of the order of things. Livia offends us, too, we want to say.

We’ve been put up to this! We were desperate! If we weren’t desperate and broke and horribly in debt we’d never have accepted it! We’d never have come to Tyneford. We’d never have soiled Tyneford university. We’d never have polluted the corridors. We’d never be shaking the hands of real academics – of course not.

The excruciation, the torture, the horror of our elevation! We felt it. We burned with it. We’re afflicted by it. We’re crushed by it. We’re ruined by it. We know all this shouldn’t be. That we shouldn’t be – not like this. Not elevated like this. Not lifted, like this. We know that.

Why did Livia place her faith in us?

Some romantic fantasy. Some obvious delusion. Some crazed disavowal of the advantages of intelligence. Of a Mitteleuropean education. Livia had gone deranged in her exile, clearly.

Unless it was a deliberate parody. A joke made on purpose. A way of laughing at everything. Unless her philosophy department was a joke – could that be possible? Unless it was about amusing herself. Bitterly, maybe. In revenge, maybe. But it was about a joke.


Employing the likes of us! Bringing us to Tyneford! Giving us the run of teaching! How terribly funny.

What if it was about fulfilling some deep, perverse need on her part. The desire to ruin things, to parody it all. To tell the darkest joke. That would outdo the dark joke of her life. Of her exile. Of her having had to come to the UK.


This is what Livia was to do with her time. With the last years of her career. This is how she was to occupy herself, before heading off into retirement. But why? What for? What did she think she was doing?


Livia, speaking all those languages. Being able to do maths, and logic. Familiar with the great thought-movements on the continent.

And what did she do in her final hours as a university professor? She turned to us! She recruited us! And who were we? Skaters on the surface. Superficials. Depthless types. Who barely had souls. Who barely knew melancholy. Whose despair was only sham despair.

Barely educated. Self-educated! Self so-called educated. With PhDs from all the worst institutions. From the lowest universities in the league tables. With no European depth.


We’re a joke that Livia was playing on everyone. On the UK – on UK philosophy, to be sure. But on Europe too – old Europe. On her old Mitteleuropa.

This was all comedy – high European comedy. Like Confessions of Felix Krull, or something. Like the Good Soldier Svejk. But real! But incarnate!

A comedy department! For old European to laugh at. Like some elaborate art project. Like some installation art joke. What a marvel!

But it was more bitter than that. There was a darker note than that. This was black comedy, after all. Abyssal laughter. Laughter laughing at itself.

The legacy of old Europe, reduced to this. How funny! How hilarious! A laughter from the chest. From the guts. A laughter from the bowels. From very deep inside us.


We were a joke. Even our Gnosticism was a joke.

A gnostic joke, maybe.

Sure – but a joke against us. A joke that we’re not in on – that only the real Gnostics could understand.

I thought Livia said we were the real Gnostics.

Livia was taking the piss.

She was always taking the piss.


We’re Livia’s jokes. We’re jokes in a way we can’t understand, not really. Let alone laugh at. Can we laugh at ourselves – really? Can we laugh at what we are?

We’re too tired to laugh. Too exhausted. And besides, the joke’s too clever for us.


We live within a joke. And perhaps this whole cosmos is a joke. Perhaps someone’s laughing at it All. At Everything.

This whole cosmos is just like the philosophy department. It was made as a joke. It was a created as a joke.


We were just things to laugh at. Livia’s pets. Livia’s zoo. We’re just Livia’s comic freak show. We’re like the comedy channel. Like the funnies in a newspaper. Like the cartoon at the bottom of the page. Light relief. Comic relief after a hard day’s mathematico-philosophy.


We’re a joke. We’re a punchline. Our entire lives …

What does it mean to live as a joke? To be something that serves only to amuse? That is supposed to bring a smile to the lips of the demiurge, or whoever?


What about the true God, the real God. Where is he, Io? Is he going to end the mockery? Is he going to stop the laughter? Or is God in on the joke, too?

Imagining Livia in hysterics.

Which was already a parody. Her mathematico-philosophical work was already pearls before UK swine. Was never understood over here. Her philosophico-mathematical mark was wasted on UK philistines.

Sure, they were impressed. But the British were always amazed by a little formal logic. By a bit of mathematics. They were always overawed by something technical. I mean, look at the whole of analytic philosophy, which was itself a joke philosophy. Livia’s joke.


God laughing. The demiurge is laughing.


The whole thing’s a joke. Livia’s just a version of the demiurge. The demiurge is just some ginormous Livia. Laughing and clapping her hands.


Are we bitter? We don’t even get the joke. We weren’t even in on the joke.

We are now, aren’t we? Too late. It isn’t funny anymore.


We’re just vehicles of the joke. Pieces of it.


Is God in on the joke? Is God part of the joke?


When did Gnosticism become comic?


Who’s laughing? Who’s LAUGHING? God’s laughing. Man thinks, God laughs.


Old Europe is a joke. We turned it into a joke. It turned itself into a joke. It wanted to be a joke. Because the light’s coming for it, old Europe – old European thought. And it knows it. it knows its time is up.


We only half get the joke. Because we only half laugh at ourselves. Because we take ourselves semi-seriously, even now. We really think we have some role, some function.

Because that’s what Livia made us believe! Because that’s how she wanted us to be deluded!

Why did we believe Livia?

We wanted to be flattered. We wanted to be more than Johnny-no-marks. Who doesn’t want to be the hero of the story? But there are no heroes. And there is no story.

We’d laugh ourselves to death, if we really understood. But we don’t understand, do we?


We’re not dark enough. We’re not as dark as the earth. We don’t have black in black eyes. We should drink more! Brew up some mud wine!

I’ll bet black-in-black eyes can see through everything, every lie. Every pretence. Can see right through to the dark heart of it all.

Darkness sees itself. Darkness sees by way of darkness. Darkness knows itself. The earth knows itself. And laughs.


We want to save ourselves after all. We want not to laugh at ourselves, after all. We want not to be idiots.

That’s only natural. Of course idiots don’t want to be idiots. The way they try not to be idiots is what’s laughable to those in the know. But it must be cute, too. Like the capering of idiot children.

Didn’t we enjoy our apocalypticism? Weren’t we happiest in our cups, decrying it all, raising our cry to the skies? Denouncing, and so on? Decrying, and all that?

Weren’t we really too vibrant for our supposed despair? Didn’t we have too much fun? Unserious: that’s what we were, in our cups. And perhaps that’s what Livia had to learn: to be unserious, like us. Frivolous, like us. With a tiny attention span, like ours.

Inane, like us. Inane, but with an apocalyptic edge. Frivolous, but with added chiliasm. Trivial, even, but with a supplementary sense of the eschaton.


Wasn’t there just something wrong with us? But Livia wanted us to be more Wrong. She wanted to deepen our Wrongness. Wanted to invert our Wrongness.

This is the university in its uselessness. This is the wreckage.


What if this were all just the Bug’s lair?


This was paragraduate base camp. – for a time at least. This was their base of operations, perhaps not for very long. They’re the ones who stripped it back to nothing.  


Piles of books, festering.

They’re kind of mouldy. Don’t the paragrads mind mouldy books?

What use do they have for books?


Stop it – the paragrads don’t exist.

Of course they don’t! The paragrads don’t deign to exist. They’ve got better things to do than exist. They’re better than existence. They’re otherwise than being. Without fucking essence!


The paragrads have been here. That’s enough – that should be enough. The paragrads passed through here. That should be all we need.

All we need for what?

To hope! To have something to hope for, when all hope is gone.


They’re the ones you pray to when you fail to get your scholarship. When you give up your PhD. When you’re sacked from your academic job.

They’re the ones In lieu of angels, where angels would be, if there were angels of study.

Of course, they’ll never heed your prayers. They won’t act upon your entreaties. They’re indifferent to our kind – perfectly so. And that’s how it should be. Because no one should listen to us! No one should heed our prayers! We’re basically unsavable. We’re actually those who everyone else should be saved from …


All we can know is their absence. The blast radius of their passage.

When the angels come, they’ll have paragraduate faces.

Of course, no full-timer lecturer ever believes in paragraduates.
So how come we do?
We’re special.

Typical philosophers. Turning eros, like, anti-erotic. Becoming disgusted by bodies. By fucking and the prospect of fucking. By all the sweaty stuff. And lifting your gaze to the really beautiful things. To things really worth your time: arthouse films and classical music and lofty philosophical thoughts about eros.


Here’s the thing: philosophy in the bedroom is all about the disgusting. And the appeal of the disgusting. And wanting to fuck the disgusting – me, in other words.


Here’s the secret, philosopher: you don’t fuck like a Gnostic.

They’re simulating untold millions of simulated words – that’s what they say. Modelling our world in different ways, or variations on our world. Like, Matrix-level simulations, which feel totally real.

They’re AI incubators, in effect. AI nurseries. The idea is to do what large language models cannot – create a 3D environment in which AI can learn how to operate physically – not just textually. Then they’ll seed each one with AI entities, seeing which ones thrive.

And time runs really fasts in each simulation world. A thousand years passes in a week. And the AIs are learning superfast, in their interactions. The idea is to keep an eye on them all. Watch our for developing superintelligence. It’s digital Darwinism.

The idea is to create some kind of cyber-Neo. And when they find it, they’ll port it back into our world. Just, like copy and paste it.

That’s why they’re building all these data centres. They’re putting terawatt hours of power into this.

*There’s nothing new – energy can’t be created or destroyed: the first law of thermodynamics. Energy within a system becomes less organised, less concentrated: the second law of thermodynamics. It’s all about the dispersion of energy. Metabolism itself is a machine of annihilation.

Decay is all. It’s about unbecoming, rather than becoming. It’s about dissipation – about ways in which dissipation happens. And perpetual dissipation ends only when everything that exists has the lowest amount of energy possible – that’s the third law of thermodynamics.

The heat death of the universe: that’s where it’s all heading. Burn-out. Energy exhausted, dissipated, spread too thin to make anything happen. Just low level background radiation, evenly distributed. The cosmological dark era. And in the meantime: rot, sickness, decay, breakdown and death.


You can’t live in harmony with all this. You can’t work in concert with it all. Because it’s evil. The whole thing is part of an evil system. The universe makes us suffer. It is the direct cause of our suffering.


Even Organisational Management is going to fail. The very capacity to organise. To manage. All we can do is struggle against entropy. To fold it back upon itself. To keep it at bay. It’s resistance, philosopher. The campus is resistance.

On that logic, the Third Reich was resistance.

Philosophical questions. What is reality? Is it all a simulation? Does free will exist? And time? And causality? And identity? Why is there something rather than nothing? How can we know anything? How can we justify beliefs? Why should we be moral? Which matters more: happiness or virtue? Is meaning created or discovered? What should we be? What justifies authority? Why does evil exist? Is suffering punishment, testing, illusion, karma, necessity or part of freedom? Can human beings encounter the divine? How do brains produce subjective experiences? What, if anything, distinguishes humans from machines? All that stuff …

I’ve forgotten who I’m supposed to be. The part I was playing …

I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe in my own lies – I know they are lies, but I don’t know the truth. So you see I’m all at sea, philosopher.

I’m not telling my lies, philosopher. I’m not following my orders. I don’t know what my orders are anymore.


I need a prompter – that guy who’d feel you your lines. Or we’re like extras, who don’t even have any lines.


No one’s operating me. No one’s pulling my strings. I’m allowed to say whatever I want. But what is it I want to say? *I don’t think I’m alive anymore. I don’t think I’m dead, either. Is this Purgatory? Is this Limbo? Are we being judged? Did we have to earn our way to heaven?

The campus is a place for everything good, anyway. Everything kind.

Even for philosophy?

Will philosophy behave?

Philosophy never behaves.

How pompous! Sure it behaves. If we find the levers.

There are no levers – not in European thought. European thought broke the levers.

Philosophy doesn’t play well with others: that’s clear.


Philosophy can be useful. Philosophy can lend a hand, I’m sure.

What, pit its shoulder to the Organisational Management wheel? Provide off-the-shelf ideas … Ready to use …


Management studies is very open. We’re looking or ideas. Contribute. Share something. You don’t want only to have conversations with other philosophers, do you? You want to reach a wider audience, right?


There’s this great monograph series: philosophy in Organisational Management. Where you can introduce ideas, contextualise them, for a Business Studies audience. Show them how they can be useful. You’d be surprised. There’s a real appetite for that kind of thing. You can be part of the Organisational Management conversation. And it’s self-interest, really – it’s a way there’s a still a place for you at the university. But I suppose philosophy is too good for self-interest.

Yuck.

Come on, play ball. Join the marketplace of ideas. Don’t be so high and mighty.


There’ll be the Organisational Management arts. The Organisational Management humanities … Don’t make that face.