Work in Progress

It’s supposed to be a thinking campus. A campus for ideas.

What do these buildings think about? What is the glass and steel thinking? And these paving stones? These fancy lampposts? And what do they think of us, wandering through?

They’re monitoring us, that’s all I know. They’re listening to our conversation. For keywords and phrases. They’re measuring our body temperature. The rate our hearts beat. Any … agitation we might be feeling.

 

They’re tagging us, tracking us, measuring us, coding us, rating us, restricting us …

 

They’re reading our minds. They know that we’re against them. They know that we’re negation – pure negation. That we hate them.

They’re probably spraying things to calm us down. They’re pumping something into the air, to alter our mood. They’re probably changing the lightning, to make us see things differently.

 

Campus surveillance. Campus supersurveillance.

They can read our thoughts, pretty much … Our misinformational thoughts. Our disinformational thoughts.

They can see into your soul. If we actually have souls … If they haven’t already  sucked them out.

 

Do you think the lampposts are listening? Are we being monitored? Are the algorithms picking out dubious phrases? Are we being flagged as dangerous subversives?

 

They're probably listening to us now. AREN’T YOU, FUCKERS? They're enjoying following us working out their plans.

Come on, satanists, flash the campus lights if you can hear us! Give us a sign! Beam something into the heavens! Light up the fucking clouds!

 

Haven’t we always feared it: a knock on the door? The secret police?

But what’s worse: that there will be no knock at the door. That they have us contained, that’s all – perfectly. They know we won’t do anything. They know we’re not any real threat. They have us contained. In the uni. In the humanities. In Philosophy – particularly in Philosophy.

They’ve already won: that’s what this campus says. They’ve conquered the territory. They’re busy with the clear-and-hold op now.

 

They won the battle: that’s what this campus says. And now they’re letting us live on, to see their victory. To live out our humiliation.

 

They’ve swallowed the world: that’s what the campus says. It’s all been devoured. Newcastle isn’t Newcastle anymore. The meaning of the world’s been changed.

This is the new architecture, postgraduates. Take note.

We’ll live and work in places like this. The campus will swallow up the city – the old city. Will incorporate it. They know what they’re doing. This is the new urbanism. Study it well.

 

This campus is itself an education, postgraduates. An anti-education. It’s everything we’re against, in every detail.

Which is why it’s an opportunity. To hold yourself in absolute tension with your surroundings. To know that you’re out of this world – any part of this world. You have to know what you’re not.

Probably the whole design was bought from some  globalist’s template. Probably exactly the same campuses are being built all over the world. In one hundred and four campuses at once. Designed for mind control.

It’s part of the great globalist coup d’etat. The whole synchronised global takeover. They’ve perfected the legal framework. The financial framework. This is part of the architectural framework.

 

Once the world order is complete. Once you’ve done the clear and hold. Secured the territory. Put down the revolts and all possible revolt. Once the World Solution has been found.

It’s part of the clear and hold op. That’s what they’re up to. Wiping out little pockets of resistance in the uni.

Look, these guys are in charge of the entire planet. There’s no external enemy. So they’re just going through their occupied territory, trying to enforce ideological uniformity.

 

They’re decommissioning the old reality, and implementing a new one. Right in front of our eyes. And everyone’s going along with it. A thousand years of darkness: that’s what’s coming. Slavery. A slavery system. The new Hell. They’re building Hell. A false reality. A fake reality.

We’ve come to the dragon’s lair.

We’ve been made to come.

They’re going to try to fuck with our heads. To do things to us.

We’ve resisted up to now, haven’t we?

But this is their place. Their zone. Where they’re at their strongest.

 

The campus has plans for us. The campus is programming us. This is campus brainwashing. Happening in real time!

 

This the cage.

It doesn’t look like a cage.

This is the trap.

 

We’re enclosed. Trapped. It’s a big trap, but a trap nonetheless. I feel a kind of … claustrophobia. Which is indistinguishable from agoraphobia. The vastness of the campus is an enclosed vastness. The infinite size is a finite size, is contained within limits. This isn’t our place. It’s alien.

It’s doing things to us, this campus. It’s working on us.

It’s leading us. Driving us. As though it were some kind of cattle run – a very gentle cattle run. As though it were some gentle abattoir.

 

We’re being channelled by the campus. Led somewhere.

We’re being borne along to its centre. There’s somewhere it wants us to go.

 

It’s like there’s a tractor beam. We’re being drawn – pulled across the campus. Some magnetic force. It’s like we know where we have to go. It’s fate. We’re being drawn further and further in.

 

The way it’s all laid out. They’ve put thought into this. Planning. It must be based on some UN model of population pacification. They know what they’re doing. This isn’t random. Perfect for social control, or whatever. Perfect for future lockdowns …

It’s working on us now. Can’t you feel it? The very architecture. The very layout of the buildings. The paving stones they use.

 

They know what they’re doing. They know what the effect of all this is on us. The dwarfing. The feeling of futility. Of impotence. That others, greater than us are in charge. That there’s no point in lifting a finger against them.

Europe! So far away! France! Germany! So inconceivable! So unreal!

We’ve never even been. We’ve never even dared to go. We can’t imagine what it would like to visit Paris. Imagine it: Paris. Let alone Berlin!

Hasn’t Paris got gates to keep our kind out? Hasn’t it got detectors? Wouldn’t the Parisian air itself rebel if we tried to breathe it in? Wouldn’t the Parisian cobbles heave upwards in protest, if we tried to walk on them?

 

Better to deny it altogether: there’s no such thing as Paris. There is no Paris, there cannot be. Paris is a step too far. They made Paris up. We’re stuck in our Truman Show, which has only has a painted Paris.

No Paris, and no University of Paris 7 and no École normale supérieure. And no Sorbonne. And no seminars. Derrida never existed. Lacan. No, no. Let alone Deleuze. Especially Deleuze. There never was a Paris. Paris is impossible. Paris cannot be. There’s only the Organisational Management campus.

 

The Anglophone enthusiast kind. The don’t-really-speak-the-language kind. The desperate provincials. Who’ve turned, for some reason, to what they do not understand and cannot understand. To what they’re not equipped to understand. To what must lie forever beyond them …

 

Of course, Cicero was a European, and even an Eastern European. English was her third language. But here were Europeans en masse. What the plural noun for a bunch of Europeans? A Culture. A High Brow. A Loftiness. A in-crowd. An Intelligentsia.

 

Real Europeans are kinda scary. Do you mean you really came from France. From Germany? All that way. All that distance.

 

We’re desperately provincial! Pathetically so! We shouldn’t be let out of the provinces. We confine ourselves to the provinces. Voluntarily.

The likes of us shouldn’t be allowed to travel about the world. From here to there. We should stay in our adopted region. Locked in our houses. Our rooms. Should defile the rest of the world. Should spread across the rest of the world, like a plague.

 

We have no thoughts! We have no ideas! Nothing of our own! The cupboard is bare! The tank is empty! There was never anything there! We think with other people’s ideas. Which we barely understand.

We push around the ideas of others. Badly! Incompetently! There’s nothing new or original about us.

 

To have been raised to these heights … is grotesque. To have given us lectureships. No, no. It’s not in the order of things. It makes us question the entire order of things.

There are such things as ranks. As hierarchies. No – lectureships should have fallen to us. Not to us. Not to our kind.

Say what you will about us, but we know our place. And Cicero lifted us above our places. We’ve been Elevated – illegitimately. We’ve been Lifted – into the wrong place. We’re on the wrong shelf. These aren’t our offices, not really. This isn’t our department. 

It’s like David Byrne sings: this isn’t our quadrangle. This isn’t our lecture theatre. These aren't our private-school-educated students.

What about the Humanities Liberation Army?

They don’t exist.

They will, though. They’re going to. If they put us under any more pressure …

 

We should start the Humanities Liberation Army. Right now. It should be us. We should lead the vanguard. Be the change you want to see, and all that.

We should look for Cicero in the tunnels. She’s probably gone underground – literally. Joined forces with the remnants of the old department. She’s probably running her operation from there.

 

The tunnel postgraduates have lost their eyes – that’s what I’ve heard. They don’t need them anymore. They feel their way through the darkness. Sniff their way through it. They’re terribly pale. And hunched over. They’re not quite used to standing upright.

 

What were these tunnels even built for?

To get the coal to the quayside. And for culverts – rivers they sent underground.

It was the postgrads who linked up the tunnels. They dug through. Dug more. So that we now have the catacombs of Newcastle, kinda like the ones in Paris. There’s a whole secret city down here. With its own rules. Its own way of doing things.

 

There’s, like, a natural cave system down here as well, apparently. Very ancient. With its own rock art.

Bollocks.

There’s a whole northeast command unit, I know that. It was built in case of nuclear war. As part of an alternative command structure.

And there’s bound to be some Newcastle billionaire building a bunker down here.

 

Our nation underground. Our philosophy nation. This is where all the humanities will have to go, in the end: to the tunnels.

 

Under the city. Actually, under the university. It’s the counter university. The university in secret.

 

The caves are deep. They’re like a honeycomb.

They’re like a brain. The counterbrain of Newcastle. The deep brain that’s thinking about deep things …

 

Cicero’s the ultimate white hat. She’s coming to save us. To overturn the tables.

So you really think Cicero is going to save us. Is it like QANON? Are there Cicero drops?

I found this weird X account. Sounds like Cicero. Listen. That’s her.

Postgraduate ardour. Postgraduate desire. There’s no stronger force in the universe. Except part time lecturer ardour. Hourly paid lecturer desire.

 

Our time as nearly men and women. As ghosts of full time academics. Drafted in for emergency cover. For maternity leave. As doubles. Doppelgangers. As Almosts. As Nearlys. As Not Quites.

 

And sometimes, your frustrations just bust out. Just break out. Free-style seminar rants. About those smug full timers. About how little they’ve achieved, those full time philosophers. About the complacency of full time uni staff. About their mediocrity. Which is what follows when like employs like.

About the unfairness of it all. About how many years you’ve studied. About how poorly you’re paid. And you can’t help it busting out of you. You can’t prevent it breaking through – erupting.

And bigger stuff. Wilder stuff. When you strut your edgelord stuff in front of them. It’s all going to collapse soon. The levels of debt – private and public. Like a Great Depression on steroids. When you talk dark. Talk apocalypse. To people who have to listen to you. Who actually pay to listen to you.

Your flights of oratory. Your pathos. Because you have that: pathos.

This might be your last chance, you tell them, your captive audience. These might be the last seminars you’ll ever run. Next year, someone else will be here before them. And the year after, someone else …

 

Your seminar students: the only people who’ll ever look up to you. Who’ll ever respect you. Who’ll ever think you have something to say. The only people in your life who take you seriously. And pretty much the only company you have, when you take them out for a drink after class.

 

Part time desperation of the heart. Bursting out of you in class. All your desperation. All your ardour. Your frustration at being paid per hour. At the terrible conditions of your labour.

The exploitation! The degradation! The great unfairness! Where you’ll only ever be unremembered. Uncelebrated. But busy keeping the whole academic show on the road. Keeping departmental life rolling forward on the back of your poorly paid labour.

The whole academic apartheid! The absolute division between the full time and the part time! Where the full time don’t even in recognise you in the corridor Where they don’t even know your name. Where you simply walk by them unrecognised, those for whom you are teaching.

Where you’re underlabourers. Invisibles. Nameless adjuncts, as replaceable as machine parts. Ghosts of the academic world.

 

There’s an oversupply of you, of your kind. There are too many of you, of your kind.

Which means that you or someone like you will always be teaching the seminars. Which means there’s always a new crop of freshly PhD’d part timers, looking for work. Desperate for work.

 

Reliables – that’s what you are. Dependables. Balancing teaching for several departments at once. Travelling here and then there. Crossing town.  Teaching this and then that. Ready to be used until you’re burnt out and thrown away.

 

Standing in at short notice and even shorter notice. Parachuted in to talk of this and then that

Keeping it all going. Keeping the academic show on the road. Keeping it all rolling forward. But unacknowledged! Unthanked!

 

But how your soul burns! How your eyes shine when you teach!

 

Invisible one, your hearts beat higher than theirs. Buried one, your thoughts burn brighter. Obscure one, you feel more. Love more.

Oh precarity! Oh life on the edge! Your fate, not in your hands. So delicate, so trembling, your fate! Beating its wings, your fate! So tremulous, so sensitive, your fate!

 

If they’d only let you lecture! If they’d just let you run your own module. If only they could just give you a year’s contract. To show what you could do! How indispensable you were!

 

How you burn, inside. How you blaze, inside. How you scream inside,

The state of your soul! A Raskolnikov. A-that-guy-out-of-Hunger …

 

Philosophy could explode inside you. You could just explode with light in all directions.