Work in Progress

This is the paradigm. This is how we’ll all live now. This is how it’s going to be. The way we survive here must be the way we survive anywhere.

 

This is the forever campus. This is the future.

They’ll erase the past. They’ll memory-hole everything before. They’ll disappear all the old stuff and pretend that this is all there ever was.

 

This is how we’ll live. This is what they want for us. To be only capable of – this. For our imaginations never to rise above – this. Our hopes. Our aspirations. What we could be – none of it above this.

This is how they want us, now and forever. And this is how they want the past to have been. As steps in the direction of this. As the on-ramp to this. And this is how they want the future to be. Just more of this.

And the party’s just more of this. An acceleration of this. A welcome party to this.

 

Don’t you feel emptied – that they’re hollowing you out? That you’re being cavitated, essentially? That we’re going to be like them, the organisational managers.

Synths, you mean? Zombies or whatever?

 

They’ll bring all the peoples of the world to places like this. This is where we’ll all be rehoused. Repurposed. Put to work. Entertained.

This is where they want us. Right here, and places like here.

Do we know how deeply lost we are? Do we know? Do we feel it? The extent of our loss? The depth of our loss? Of our disorientation? Because I don’t think we know.

 

Could we say something true if we tried? Could we actually live in truth?

 

You want is to worship our groundlessness. Worship the hollowness and the bleakness and the emptiness.

You want us to worship the void. Exalt the void. But how are we supposed to worship what doesn’t care for us? Doesn’t love us?

Cicero's great love for Walter Benjamin. Her insistence that no one really understood Walter Benjamin, not even her! The extend of Walter Benjamin’s world rejection Of the Jewish-philosophical rejection of the natural. Of the depths of Jewish-philosophical disenchantment. The Jews were the most sober people of all – that’s what she said. And Walter Benjamin knew that better than anyone.

 

Cicero's suspicion of the Christian celebration of the gift – and of the world as gift. We’ve broken the covenant, she said. It’s only amorphy from now on.  It’s all we deserve!

Her suspicion of all human forms of order. Of every human institution. Each institution was secretly anarchic, she maintained. Each was an attempt to conceal the void. Even as it was built on the void! Which really meant a denial of the void.

The human being is essentially a creature of the void, Cicero said. And God is the void, and nothing but the void. God is a name for primordial anarchy. Void denial and abyss denial is what essentially drives every move towards organisation / institutionalisation.

Atheism drives the institution, Cicero said. And only those who understand this – only those who keep the distance from all worldly things – can be trusted. Only those sustained by distance. For whom the darkness shines. Behind everything. Before everything. Primordially. An-anarchically. Only those who can see the crack in all things. Who witness the essential incompletion. The essential chaos.

Philosophy Departmental meeting.

What’s supposed to be today? What’s supposed to happen today? What are the plans?

Whose plans?

Our plans.

Fuck our plans. Our plans never get us anywhere.

 

What’s the next item on the agenda? What’s the most anti Board of Studies thing we can think of?

God. Let’s talk about God.

You start.

 

Is Antarctica on the agenda?

Why should Antarctica be on the agenda. I want to know what’s been happening there. I have a lot of questions about Antarctica.

You’re no allowed to fly over it, you know. Or go there.

Dave Lee Roth went there. Slept out on the ice, next to the penguins. Said they kept him awake. He’s a great traveller. Motley Crue wanted to play a gig there. I don’t think they did, though.

Did you see that Werner Herzog film about Antarctica. With the penguin? I liked that bit: the penguin just wandering off on its own, in the opposite direction to the sea. Off into the heart of the frozen continent.

Shut up about Antarctica. We need to get back to the agenda. There are things to discuss!

 

How about pyramids – are they on the agenda? There are pyramids in Antarctica, you know. And on Mars. What does it all mean?

And I think we should have the Sphinx on the agenda. How old is it, really? Does it really show signs of rain erosion?

As Chair of Board of Studies, I forbid any discussion about the Sphinx at this meetings.

Or pyramids?

Fuck pyramids.

And Gopekle Tepe?

I forbid the discussion of Gopekle Tepe.

So what are we going to discuss?

 

I think we should use the occasion to have group.

Group what?

Therapy. I think we have deep, deep issues. Especially you.

Philosophical issues? Personal issues?

Personal issues are philosophical issues. The personal is philosophical.

You mean political.

I mean philosophical.

 

More mead?

Fuck off with your mead.

Did you buy the whole collection? Are there different flavours, or something?

They come in pairs.

Like a brace of meads?

Shut up about meads. I don’t want to discuss mead. Don't minute anything about mead, Fiver. 

Philosophy’s the oldest subject. All the other academic subjects split off from it. Maths. Physics. Law … History and geography … Religious studies … The history of ideas, in general. Politics … Psychology. And most recently, sociology.

Which means Philosophy’s just left to itself.

Poor, lonely philosophy …

With the most intractable questions. Questions the other subject areas can’t answer, but which come to trip them up in the end. And that’s what happened: every subject splits off from philosophy, but then returns to it, in the moment of its deepest questioning. Its deepest need.

And that’s what’s happening with Organisational Management?

Perhaps. In the moment of its deepest need, Organisational Management is becoming philosophical. And that’s why it’s brought us on board.

Very flattering for you, philosopher.

The question is whether Philosophy will become organisational-managerial, or whether Organisational Management will become philosophical.

 

All subjects become philosophical, in the end. All profound debate is about philosophical things.

Is there a philosophy of physics?

Sure.

A philosophy of chemistry.

I don’t know.

Probably.

Is there a philosophy of … literature? And art?

Art’s all about philosophy.

And business studies …

You know there is.

And Organisational Management …

Of course.

And what about philosophy itself? Is there a philosophy of philosophy?

There’s metaphilosophy. And metaethics. But really the philosophy of philosophy is philosophy. Nothing else.

Deranging.

Philosophy’s always about philosophy, in some sense. About the possibility of philosophy – of thinking. And all the things that get in the way of thinking.

Cicero’s Hot Right Wing Girlfriend. Herwig for short.

What was her real name?

Pandora, I think … Or Petronella. Something posh.

She used to call us libtards. Like, she had open contempt for us.

So did Cicero, quite often. Cicero was nothing if not insulting.

Herwig, though. Her contempt was hot. She was hot.

Which was why Cicero was with her.

The only right wing humanities academic, imagine that … And Cicero found her … Cicero sniffed her out …

I actually loved the way Herwig hated us.

Masochist.

Every masochist finds a sadist.

And in particular, a hot right wing sadist.

Did you ever hear Herwig talk about free markets? And free speech? Did you ever hear her talk about Austrian economics? And the US constitution?

Flaming fucking hot.

And totally forbidden. The stuff she said … The total opposite to everything you learn in the humanities. To everything you’d read in the Guardian.

What’s happened to Herwig? I’d like to inherit Herwig.

We need to find her. We need to go on a Herwig pilgrimage.

Shouting HERWIG! HERWIG!

No answer.

 

You know Cicero. She could flip from extreme left to extreme right at the drop of a hat. One minute, she’d been encouraging us to form some Weatherman-like terror group.

Which I was supposed to lead …

And the next, it was all about arming ourselves. About how the government should be scared of the people. Not the other way round.

And she refused EDI training, do you remember?

They made her go.

And the trainer resigned with nervous exhaustion.

And she campaigned against the UN flags they were flying on campus. She wrote that open letter …

And then there was Herwig.

Oh, Herwig. The ultimate hot right wing girlfriend.

Herwig used to ride to hounds with some Durham hunt, according to Cicero.

Looked great in jodhpurs.

And Herwig was apparently obsessed with Jouvenel. Which meant Cicero became obsessed with him, too. And Schmitt. They used to quote Schmitt to each other all the time, very pleased with themselves. Schmitt was the philosopher of our times, Herwig said, and Cicero agreed with her.

Cicero threatened to get a Schmitt tattoo.

Herwig had that dominatrix thing going on, didn’t she? God, the right are hot.

Trust Cicero to find the last rightwing academic.

We have to save Walter Benjamin from the fate of providing decorative quotations for the anglophone humanities. From being quoted by every idiot in the anglophone humanities. From being a supplier of beautiful epigraphs for dullard anglophone essays. These pitiful fuckers in English lit or Architecture or Music studies trying to jazz up their essays … trying to sneak in some poetry … quoting some gorgeous prose that would never normally be permitted in the Anglophone humanities …

 

Anglosphere types with their dutiful prose, their never-catching-fire prose. Humanities scholars with their utilitarian prose. Their not-allowed-any-flourishes prose. Anglosphere intellects with their laboured prose. Their zombie prose. Their killers-of-ideas prose.

Who presume to quote Walter Benjamin in their essays. Who think they can add some Walter Benjamin epigraph to make their work more enigmatic, more seductive, more old European, or whatever.

Reducers! Diminishers! Who are themselves reduced! Themselves diminished! The small-souled. The reckoners and calculators. Who think they can redeem their work with a few well chosen quotations from Walter Benjamin!

Always madness with us. Always the mounting to some mad apocalyptic conclusion.

 

We lack any sense of proportion. And we don’t even want one, a sense of proportion. We’re actually entertained by having no sense of proportion. What good would it do us – a sense of proportion? How would we get our mad apocalyptic kicks?

 

It’s the usual mad travesty – just as everything in our lives is mad travesty. Because we can’t do anything calmly, systemically, sanely. Because we entirely lack measure. Because we leap hysterically from zero to apocalypse.

 

In the end, we want to hang onto our madness. It’s the only thing that keeps us entertained in the world’s night.

 

Cicero brought us together for exactly this reason. Because she enjoyed madness and hysteria. She was a connoisseur of madness and hysteria. We were to provide her with madness and hysteria crew. Which is why she tried to keep us drunk.

 

We were been created by climate hysteria and financial hysteria. We ingested it all … we couldn’t help it. We’ve been force-fed states of emergency. Our souls are in emergency – permanent emergency. We’re perma-panicked.

 

We’ve been wound up too tight. Our blood pressure’s rocketing. We’re candidates for strokes! Heart attacks!

We’ve been driven mad. By climate hysteria. By government messaging. That’s our origin story. It’s our equivalent of being bitten by a radioactive spider.

 

At least we don’t belong in this world. At least we’re not at home with it. At least we feel the poison.

But that’s all we feel! Poison and lies: that’s all we know.

 

But what we’re doing to impressionable postgraduates! The example we are to them, our innocent postgraduates. We’ve all but kidnapped them. All but inducted them into a cult – a mad European philosophy cult. That isn’t even European philosophy. That no one in Europe would recognise as philosophy.

The time of the great drinkers has passed. There’s no wisdom to drink. No special drunken insight. That’s all played out. There’s no truth in drinking, after all. No veritas in vino. Culture hero alkies are just pure tedium now.

 

And depression has become – tedious. There are no fresh revelations that the world is shit. No variations. No twists. It’s all been done. It’s played out. Things remain as always were. Except worse, probably.

 

The drugs don’t work, not anymore. The highs aren’t available. Just some … mechanical excitement. Just some predictable freneticism. But nothing is revealed, not anymore.

We’re to be lightning rods – Cicero always said that. That’s our role. We’re made to bear what others cannot.

Truth, shooting through us. The divine zap. The divine download.

We’re capacitators. We’re sacrificial channels. We’re here to translate the lightning into something else.

 

We see what they’re doing. We know it. We’ve intuited the plan. Through sheer drunkenness. And wild hyperbole. We’re campus seers. Coming to conclusions in our rants to no one.