Author: Lars Iyer

Put down the Blanchot. Step away from the Blanchot. You’ll never get out of it, if you start on the Blanchot. You’ll be lost forever in the Blanchot vortex. By the Blanchotian Sirens’ song.

There have been so many scholars lost to Blanchot studies. I’ve seen them before – all bright eyed – keen. Full of promise. And then they … enter the oeuvre. Start reading. My God. They become shells of yourselves. Husks.

Blanchot’s work – so beautiful. So enticing. Written by some total fucking genius. Written in classical French, the essays, anyway. With perfect clarity. But that concerns the most obscure, unimaginable things.

Blanchot’s logic. It looks like logic. It reads logically – clearly. But you can never actually work out the argument. You think you can, but just when you think you’ve seized on it, it moves further out of reach. Leading you deeper into the thicket of texts.

Until you’re drowning in Blanchot! At the bottom of the Blanchot ocean! Lost in the darkness of the Blanchotian night! In the Blanchotian underworld! Carrying your flaming torch down, down, down, into those desolate pages. Like Orpheus, or whatever.

Fiver’s, like, the anti-administrator. What’s the opposite of an administrator? That’s you, Fiver. Which is why Cicero hired you.

You’ve heard of redemption through sin, right? All that Sabbati Zevi stuff? Well, you’re here to redeem admin through bad admin. Through the opposite of admin.

We’re not on edge. We’re not all urgency. We’re not all half mad. We’re not extremists anymore. We’re not far left or far right or whatever. We’re not domestic terrorists now.

Were we becoming complacent? Stupid? Hadn’t politics become just noises off? Wasn’t it all over there? Wasn’t general world suffering a matter of the usual usual?

 

Our idols are dead and our enemies are in power: that’s what we knew. But we had jobs. We were okay.

 

Marks and Spencers wanderings. Was that what we were good for? Pret a Manger avacado wraps. Was that who we were now?

 

We were distracted. Dupeable. Were we Guardian readers now? Were we liberals?

And Newcastle’s ours – too ours. Newcastle opening to us. Newcastle by bike. By Metro. Newcastle by bus, opening out.

And Newcastle’s welcoming – too welcoming. We’re part of it. It’s not actively hostile to us. It’s not throwing us off.

The city opens to us too easily: shouldn’t we be concerned? It yields itself up too easily. It’s lulling us. We’re settling down.

Where’s our world-hatred gone? Where’s our city hostility? Where’s our regeneration suspicion? Where’s our gentrification horror?

Keep low: what happened to that? Fail: what happened to that? Our watchwords. Our mantras. What do they mean now?

 

Our walking city. Our cycling city. Our summer city – opening to us in summer. The paths around the Ouseburn. The view from the Cumberland. These places. Heaton Park.

Where we’re allowed. Where we’re not under threat. Where we’re not panicked. Where we’re not in fear of our lives.

Where the skies open. The trees, in full leaf. The benches offer themselves to be sat upon. We can be here. We’re not out of place.

Joining everyone outside, at the pub. Sitting around a pub table, in the long evenings. In the can’t-believe-it’s-light-this-long evenings. In the still-a-bit-light-at-night evenings. In the as-though-the-northeast-sun-never-set evenings.

 

Social lives … did we have those? Friends … did we even have them? People to meet at the pub. Were we normal after all? How did that happen?

The risk of losing our guard. Of losing vigilance. The risk of disarmament. Of laying our weapons down.

The dangers of losing our hatred. Of feeling at home in the world. Of losing our Gnosticism. Our strangers-in-a-strange-world-ism.

 

Summer desertion. Leaving our posts. Leaving our work. The danger of not working every single day. Of not writing every single day. Not boring into the night, ever single night. Of not streamlining ourselves – our lives – for total work. A dereliction, surely. A desertion, of course.

Not turned away from the world. Not casting off from the day. Not leaving familiar diurnal shores. The danger of not turning to the essential night. Of losing our constant wakefulness! Constant vigilance!

The danger of not hating the world. And not hating ourselves as people of the world. We needed to hold onto despair. To keep our despair.

The dangers of complacency. Smiling. Of laughter that wasn’t sardonic laughter. That wasn’t hateful laughter. The danger that our humour wasn’t the blackest of all.

There’s no time for happiness – unless it’s ecstatic. Unless it was utterly wild. Unless it rose blindly into the night. Unless it was some passion of joy. Some cry of transport.

 

Were we to become weekend idlers? Sunday moochers? Pop-ups customers? Buyers of stuff for our flats?

 

Owning things. Owning stuff. The accumulation of stuff. Going out in search of stuff. Buying stuff from market stalls. From bric a brac shops. From flea markets.

Hunting down stuff. Looking out for stuff. Collecting stuff. Weighing ourselves down.

Stuff’s gravity. Stuff’s weighing us to the Earth. When this isn’t our Earth. When we don’t belong to the Earth.

Stuff to hold us hostage. Stuff to weight us down. To prevent a quick escape. To stop us fleeing. When the police knock at our door. When they come to take us away. When we’re locked up for hate speech, or whatever. For bad attitude. For dark thoughts. When we’re force medicated. When we’re rounded up.

 

Live as if we’re always about to be rounded up. As though we were about to be taken out to be shot. Cultivate paranoia. About when we’re sacked for wrongspeech. For wrongthink. When we’re shot for sins against kindness, or whatever.

Need to feel the urgency. The corruption in high places. The powers and the fucking principalities. The spiritual battle. The war in heaven.

If we can’t raise ourselves to that level. It we can’t fall to suicidal despair. If we’re not either manic or depressive – if we’re anything in between.

We don’t want normal life. We don’t want the lives of normies. We know what’s going on. We’ve seen backstage. We know the secrets.

 

Summer dangers.

We need an autumnal phase. A winter of the soul. We need to shut ourselves in. To work through the nights, the weekends, bent over our laptops.

We need to go up a philosophical gear. Move into a new phase. Stay lean. Stay in training.

Watch the right films, listen to the right music. Don’t let ourselves become spiritually flabby. No compromise! No defeat! No surrender!

We’re not going to find our notch in the sofa. We’re not going to get puppies or kittens. We’re not going to settle down. We’re not going to get comfortable in life.

Was that why we moved to the coast? Was that why we moved out, away from the city? That was where Cicero lived, of course. And didn't she encourage us: to move out to the coast? Didn't she fear the signs of our summer complacency? Didn't she look with suspicion at our summer tans? 

Summer calm. Quiet corridors. Admin staff, relieved that the academics aren’t there.

PhD students, in their cluster In the basement.

 

Flower beds replanted for graduation. The lawn mowed in the old quadrangle.

New graduates in their fur-trimmed gowns. With mortar boards.

Foreign graduates posing for photos, holding the Newcastle teddy bear, making victory signs.

 

And roadworks in the campus. Pavement fenced off. General works, to be done when the students aren’t there.

Summer carparks, half empty. Summer security guards, with nothing much to do. The summer artshow of student work.

 

The summer. Work all day. Writing all day. Returning home, satisfyingly weary. Having Done Something. Having rolled the clock forward. Having rolled with the rolling days.

 

The bright world outside the window. The bright sky. The generosity of the sky. No sunglasses. Sun in the eyes. Gladly dazzled. And teeshirted. White teeshirts. Your brown darkening.

 

Taking a righteous pause. An earned pause. A stroll around town. Perambulate. Hit Beatdown records. Marks and Spencer’s, for snacks. Because you could. Because you were rich with time. Because things weren’t all urgent.

Time – you had time. Not postgraduate time, with the pressure of completion. Not skint time, with the pressure of finding a permanent job. The job had arrived.

Enjoying time – and enjoying that enjoyment; doubling up.

 

Productive time – is that the word? Time leaning in a direction. Time bent towards something. Time the bow and you the arrow – shot towards what? Into the sky. Into the sun.  

With no particular project in mind. With the thought of writing this paper or that one. With no plan of revising this monograph chapter or that one. With no thought of submitting this abstract to that call for papers. With no idea of working on a publisher proposal.

Enjoying the time. The openness of time. Enjoying potential, without plan.

 

The sky, higher in summer. Aspirations, vaguer. Plans more diffuse, more open.

 

A holy pause. A biding. A whiling. With books. With writing. Not entirely sure in what direction it will go.

Primed – but for nothing in particular. Paused in not yet philosophy.

 

Later summer. And the new term gathering you towards it. But happy about that. Happy that there was a rhythm to the year. That there were phases to the year. That there was order – a pattern.

The academic year, like the Christian year. With its academic feast days. With its days of remembrance. With its holy days. Or like the agricultural year. With its time of sowing, of growing, of harvest. The summer months of growth. Of tending academic crops.

 

The summer office.

Pulling up your chair to your desk.

Teeshirted work entirely different to wearing a jumper work. More optimism. More uplift.

 

And surfing the net in between work-bouts. Pausing to surf. To scroll. To follow developments on X. Favourite bands on Facebook. Album rankings.

Buying something from Amazon. Fridge-magnets, say. A spray bottle. Something to put beneath plant pots. Plant ties for tomato plants. Some lengths of bamboo. Dried flowers from Etsy. For your windowsills!

Shopping – imagine that. Little shot of adrenaline, or whatever. In between work-bouts. In moments of work-relaxation.

A temporary blanking of the mind. A brief defragmenting. A caesura. A pause. Part of the rhythm of work. A regathering. Being born again for the next bout.

 

Buying stuff between work-bouts. Surfing and buying.

Consumers: is that what we’d become? Is that what full-time work did to us? Is the kind of people we are?

Stuff for our homes. For our flats. Because we had flats now. We actually lived somewhere. We weren’t lost in the world. There was a place from which to leave for work. and a place to which to return. And we were actually going to be there for some time.

A home, that wasn’t nowhere. That was here – in our new city. In our adopted city. In a part of the city. That we were getting to know as we walked to work. As we walked back from work.

Part of the city. Part of the world. Part of its busyness. Part of the whole business of the day.

A base. A place in life. In the world. Security of some kind. Not cast to the four winds.

 

Phonecalls to our parents. Not worrying them anymore. Not vexing them. Not asking for bail outs.

Content in some large way. Unashamed in some vast way.

The calm of time. A calm that wasn’t even our. Like those Richard Scarry books we’d read as children. A busy world. Of which we were part.

Keeping regular hours. Going in for eight, maybe. 'I have to be in work early’. Nine. Finishing at seven. ‘I had to finish late’. Home to eat. To a cupboard full of tins. Of dried pasta.

And not thinking about apocalypse. About the real rulers of the world. About impending global government.

Not imagining bombs falling. Terror striking from the sky. Giant invading spaceships.

The sky was just the sky, that’s all.

 

Where’s our urgency? Where’s our madness? Where’s our hatred? We used to be able to count on our hatred. Where’s our immoderation? Where’s our lack of proportion? Where’s our apocalypticism? Where’s our madness, even. We used to be able to depend on our madness.

 

And the campus. Foreign students doing hula hoops. Playing ping pong on the tables. Foreign students, sitting on the eating steps, lunch from the sushi place. From the Chinese bubble tea place. Foreign students, here to learn English. Chinese girls, hand in hand. Walking slow, slow, slow. Just like we should walk slow, slow, slow.

And the campus – the old campus, at one with the town. Part of the town. Not far off, on its own. With town wanderers, passing through. With patients to and from the Royal Victorian Infirmary, passing through. With kids on their bikes, passing through.

 

Summer breaths on the summer campus. Could lie out on that lawn. Could have a cool pint on that lawn. But no – work instead.

The idea that you could do that stuff feeds the work. Irrigates the work. The thought of an evening pint. Cycle out to the Free Trade, maybe. To the Cumberland. Out to the Ouseburn Valley for a sundowner (but the sun sets late …)

 

Summer gladness. Summer gratitude. We have jobs. We’re being paid. We’re paid for this. For summer work. Paid to work on our philosophies. Paid to buy our books on expenses. To fill our bookshelves.

We have filing cabinets. We have vast monitors on our desks. We have noticeboards. We have a stationery cupboard to raid. To pick things from. Free blu-tack. And ball-point pens. And notepads. And post it notes (of all shapes, sizes – and one that opens like a concertina.) In purple, in pale blue. In yellow.)

Paperclips. Staplers and staples. Ours to do with as we will. White board markers. Board erasers. Highlighters. We’re stationery-rich. We’re kings and queens of stationery. And elastic bands. And HB pencils. We have to buy our Pilot V5s ourselves …

And paper, in whatever colours we want. Orange paper, if we want it. Blue paper, if we want it. Yellow paper – a whole ream of it. And green paper – what would we want green paper for? But it’s there, if we want it. And white printer paper, of course. And card, if we want it. In A3. A2, for posters.

We can print what we want. As much as we want. We can commit eco-crimes. Fell whole forests. Print out whole books. Put them in boxes. Line up the boxes. Write stuff on the spines. Uncollected Derrida, or whatever.

 

We’re ready for work. Ready to begin. Ready to launch. Ready to write our own stuff. But how will we go about that?

 

Who’s going to throw us out of this? Who’s going to expel us from Paradise? No one.

We want to stay here. We want year after year of this. We want to WORK, in capital letters. WRITE, in capital letters.

We’ll do what we’re told. We’ll do what we have to.

 

Of what will be capable, given a chance? Given a job? What will we be able to do? Will we be players, after all? Will we prove ourselves? Will we become people to watch? The up and coming?

Will we be known at conferences and guest paper-givings as ambassadors of that new department in the northeast. As coming from Newcastle, where Philosophy’s been born again – as European Philosophy.

Would we make its reputation? Would we become the Newcastle school of philosophy? Would there be a bit of a mystique about us. How did we get a job up there – at Newcastle, of all places. Not some shithole former poly. Not some lower league-table mediocrity. Not some university in some minor town thing. We were in a real city. A proper city. This wasn’t Bangor. This wasn’t Wolverhampton. This wasn’t Derby. This wasn’t Reading.

A job in a proper city. A proud city. With its history. A regional capital. Not nowhere. That wasn’t Insignificant. Wasn’t Marginal. Provincial – a bit. Far away from London – sure. But its own place. Capital of its region. A famous city. From which famous people had come. Jimmy Nail and so on. With a place in history.

 

We were People at last. We were Substantial. Real. We were Eligible. We were Attractive. We were Players. We were Up and Comers.

We don’t want yes people. We want mavericks. To change Organisational Management from within.

Organisational Management doesn’t need people who come up through Organisational Management. We need people from outside. Sparring partners. People who will answer back. Who hate Organisational Management, even. Just like you.

 

You’re Alan’s charge. You’re Alan’s project. Just like you were Cicero’s. You’re the kind of person people adopt. Place their hopes in. First Cicero, now Alan.

 

He likes you. The look of you.

Is he going to share the Secret Plan with me? Confide it? Like Mustapha Mond in Brave New World? Like O’Brien in 1984? But maybe he’s not privy to their plans …

 

And I – I don’t want to be controlled opposition.

What do you want to be? The philosophical resistance?

 

Are you going to rename the city? The campus? The country?

 

This is the bit where you tell me your secret plans. Where you gloat over it all. Is it?

What makes you think I’m privy to secret plans?

Through your husband.

And what makes you think he knows plans?

 

You’re waiting for an Organisational Management messiah, who’ll make it all meaningful. Who’ll change the order of Organisational Management. So it’s no longer a tool for the implementation of the New World Order.

But what you’re really waiting for is a killer.

 

You want to be destroyed. That’s what I understand now. Shame. That’s what you feel. Overwhelming shame. You want to be punished. You want to be destroyed. Which is why you brought us here.

 

I thought you were going to give me the briefing. Tell me what it was all about. Reveal the secrets as stand up here, and look down on it all. All the stuff Orson Welles says in The Third Man. All the stuff you’re going to do to the city …

I have no idea about what we’re going to do. It’s above my pay grade.

Tell me what Organisational Management is for. Tell me at last.

Organisational Management is for Organisational Management, nothing else.

Where are your orders coming from? Outer space?

It’s a possibility.

Satan?

Maybe.

Some interstellar invasion force.

Not that I’ve heard – but why not?

Broligarchs? Controligarchs? The United Nephilim? NGOs? Public private partnerships?

The lot, probably.

I don’t believe in your void. I don’t believe in your Gnosticism. I don’t believe in your blank sky, or your empty transcendence.

I don’t believe that the world is a charnel house. I don’t believe that I’m basically dead. I don’t believe that we’ve lost the world.

God’s already won: that’s what I know. The Organisational Management towers will fall, just like the Tower of Babel fell.

God’s using all this for the good, somehow. As he always does. All things work together for the good: that’s what Paul said.

 

We’re not going to lose. We’re not going to be defeated. No one’s going to destroy us.

 

I feel grateful. I’m glad of all the bad things that happened. Because they brought me to this. And punk Christianity.

 

The great days are coming. The most beautiful days are coming. I know that.

 

Everything we do is remembered. The way we lived is remembered. None of this will disappear. It will not be lost. There is no oblivion. It will all be part of the memory of God. Every hair on your fucking heads. Every fucking fallen sparrow.

 

We’re not lost. We’re not obscure. We’re not forgotten. Even me. Even you.

 

And yet we’re in this prison. And yet we’re being poisoned. And yet we are made to lie. And yet there are their words in our mouths. And yet we’re choking on their words and their lies. And yet we’re under their power.

 

Each of us at the centre of God’s fucking love. Even you, Driss. We are so loved – and that means something. God loves us more than we can imagine.

 

I’m not going to close my eyes.

I want to see this. I want to see it. I want to hold it before me. I want to see nothing else.

If I close my eyes, I won’t be alert. I won’t be vigilant. I have to see it – until the end. Until it ends. I can never close my eyes.

 

I love this life. I love all this. I even love traipsing around he campus with you guys. I love that we’re here and together, an undefeated. And I think I even love the Northern Lights. Fake as they might be.

What’s going to happen to us, philosopher? What are we being shown? Or maybe it’s only being show to me. Maybe all this is a lesson for me. Only, what am I suppose to learn? Where is it supposed to be leading me? What am I supposed to do? Who do I have to be?

 

I’m hiding from myself. I stand in my own way. I’m … my own obstacle. How do I disappear? How to I become transparent, so that the light just pours through me?

I think it’s possible, philosopher. I think it could happen.

 

All my life I was running from it – and now … until now.

And there it is, waiting for me. So still and calm. There it is, in the light from the skylight.

 

There’s something I have to say. And I’m searching for it, philosopher. I’m trying to find the words. And let he words surprise me.

 

Am I going to have to radiate light? Me, who am not worthy of anything? Because that’s what I feel: light is going to pour through me.

 

The light’s too bright. It’s making me – see myself. It’s shining right through me. It’s showing me what I am. Revealing me to – what? To myself? To the eye of God.

Is this who I’m supposed to be? Am I living the life I’m supposed to have led? And if not? Am I supposed to repent of my entire life? Of everything?

 

My marriage – which I’m violating. My whole life – which I’m mocking.

Is there a way to live without mockery? Does it have to be a farce?

They do all these tabletop simulations here. Like, what would happen in food production collapsed.

If they made food production collapse, you mean.

If there was no more fertiliser.

If they stopped fertiliser being made, more like.

If all the meat processing plants packed up.

If they were bombed, basically.

If we lost all the sources of energy.

If we blew up the pipelines, you mean.

If there was total financial wipeout.

Which there will be.

If there was nuclear war.

Which they’re trying to provoke.

All these apocalyptic scenarios.

Manufactured apocalypses. For maximum convenience.

Such a cynic.

It’s senseless – but that’s what they want: senselessness. That’s the secret of their reign: the creation of senselessness. The roll-out of senselessness. That’s what they want to encourage: general senselessness. Because that’s all they understand: senselessness. They want to remake the world in their own senseless image.

 

This is how they hate us. This is their method. This is how they do it.

This is their nihilism. This Is their vileness.

They’re made of poison. And lies – don’t forget lies.

 

They think they’re saving us.

Do they?

I don’t believe it. They know they’re damning us, too. Just like they’re damned. They just want to twist the knife. To torture us. So that we become like them: soulless and dead-eyed and damned.

Who – the Organisational Managers?

Maybe them. Maybe whoever’s behind them. Maybe the System. Maybe fucking Satan. The Prince of this world.

 

This evil, wretched world. That they’ve made evil and wretched.

 

They’re building their system – their world system. They’re making it ugly – because that’s what they know. Sociopaths, right? They should never have been alive, so they want us to never have been alive.

 

The ground we stand on. Soaked in poison.

 

We’re sterile.

 

Every tower here is dipped in poison. Their skies – their clouds – rain poison. There’s nothing but death. But horror. But damnation. But fucking dereliction. But fucking Satanism. In their New World Order.

 

What can they do but hate? They even hate themselves – they must do.

 

Their fucking poison. We’re sick with their poison. We’re sick with their sickness. As they want us to be.

They’re murdering us – slowly. They’re dictating the terms. According to which we so-called live.

We have to find a way where they can’t reach us.

 

Is there a way to complete this dying? Not to let it just play out on their terms.

Die deeper. Die to hide. Die to keep our secret.

Let death gather us to itself like peace. Like calm. Let it take us where we’ll be safe.