Work in Progress

Why have they turned their attentions on us? Why is it our turn? Why philosophy? Why couldn’t they just have left us alone? Why couldn’t we be allowed to exist untroubled and unharassed? Why should we have to be destroyed and remade? It’s cruel … it’s needless.

Come on – of course it isn’t needless. It isn’t just philosophy’s turn. A special punishment is being meted out to us. A special, tailor-made humiliation. They’re declared war on Philosophy – of course. It is Philosophy that has to be wrestled to the ground, and that first of all.

Can they do this sort of thing? Without consultation? Is it allowed?

Apparently.

Puzzlement: who’s behind it? Whose idea has this? The Dean of the Sciences? The Dean of Arts? The uni President himself? Is there, like, a rationale for the move? Have they explained themselves?

They don’t have to explain themselves. They just act.

It makes no sense …

Of course it makes no sense. That’s the point …

It’s mockery – in plain view. They’re laughing at us. It’s a deliberate humiliation.

Is it only us they’re moving? Are they going to join up English and mech eng?

Only us.

That’s cruel … singling us out, because they know we’re weak … There are only five of us, for fuck's sake.

They’re trying to trap us. To make us resign … To lower our morale … To decrease our recruitment. They know we can’t last …

Those bastards!

This never would have happened in the old days.

In the old days, we’d never have got jobs. Not at this kind of uni.

True.

Look, It’s just some random thing. Some stupidity. Some manager or another wanted to make their stamp on the uni. Some idiot …

… They’re all idiots.

Philosophy … Organisational Management. Someone’s done it as a joke. It’s a joke told to someone else. Someone’s laughing …

No one’s laughing. The horror is that they mean it.

What are the Organisational Management types like? What do they want from us? What’s in it for them?

Our student numbers, maybe. 

Laughter.

Our reputation.

Laughter.

Fuck … this is INSANE.

It’s all insane. The world’s insane. These are careening times. These are train-jumps-the-track-lines times. There’s never been this degree of arrant madness. Obvious madness. I swear it’s accelerating. I swear it’s intensifying.

Whatever next? English moved to Marine Engineering? History to Chemical engineering? Classics to Chemical Engineering? Don’t they see how mad this is?

It’s because they sense something about Philosophy. They feel a kind of awe of Philosophy, despite everything. They know that it’s Philosophy they have to go after. Not history, say. Not the fine arts. Not music. Not English literature. No, it’s Philosophy – it must be Philosophy. Philosophy must be made to do their bidding.

Yeah – to warn the rest of the humanities that this could happen to them. That no one’s safe in the humanities. That no subject can hide … The uni’s coming for you: that’s what the Organisational Management move is showing. Never think you’re safe! Never think you’re hidden! If we can do it to Philosophy, we can do it to you …

The uni can do what it likes: that’s what this says. That’s the message being sent out. Don’t wail that it’s an injustice. The university’s the arbiter of justice. Don’t cry out that it makes no sense. The university decides what makes sense. This is a shock and awe move. This is a cow-the-humanities move. This is a we-have-infinite-power move. This is a we-can-do-anything-we-like move. This is a kneel-and-pray move. This is a behold-our-greatness move. This is a watch–it–or–you’re–next move.

Imagining the meeting where they made the decision. Imagining the negotiations. Was it discussed? Did they weigh up the pros and the cons? Did they all just agree? Were there dissenters? Was anyone against it? Couldn’t they sense the nihilism – even if they’d never heard of the word, nihilism?

They did it because of the nihilism – an unconscious nihilism, but nihilism nonetheless. They did it because of the absurdity. There’s a whole institutional unconscious at work. The university’s in the grip of deep, deep drives. A desire for revenge. On humanities expansiveness. On humanities freedom of thought.

They know us as a threat – unconsciously. They experience us as an enemy – in the backs of their minds. This is an unconscious revenge on Philosophy. On the humanities in general. They’re doing not just because they can, but because they have to. Because this is their eschatological role at the end of times: the mockers of the humanities and especially philosophy.

And it has to be Organisational Management. They had to move us to Organisational Management. The least applied, most theoretical of humanities disciplines moved to the most applied, least theoretical science subjects: of course.

Why would Organisational Management want us, anyway?

Curiosity. A bit of novelty. Organisational managers need a little chaos in their otherwise orderly lives. They need a project.

Is that what we are?

Sure – something to organise. And to manage. Something challenging.

Are we a challenge – really?

Of course. We’re a test. We’re unknown, our kind. They want some novelty. It’s like a cat with a mouse. They want to play with us before they kill it. Is it fun, playing. Fun for them.

I see it as a deliberate experiment. They’re seeing whether they can change us. From within. Cell by cell. They’re going to make us into good Organisational Managers. They’re going to show they can manage the unmanageable. The question is, who put them up to it?

Who did put them up to it?

This is part of something larger. Something global. Something civilizational.

Could be Davos types. Could be World Economic Forum types. Could be the Bank of International Settlements …

Come on, why would they bother with a Philosophy department?

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.

I think it’s a yin and yang thing. There has to be disorganisation somewhere, even in Organisational Management. Otherwise, there’d be noting to organise. There has to be the un-fucking-manageable. Without us, there’d be nothing to manage.

We’re going to be the secret madness of Organisational Management. We’re going to be the madness at Organisational Management’s heart. Organisational Management’s own caged beast, born of caged fucking beasts …

Isn’t it possible – just possible – that someone actually thought this was a good idea? That someone was trying to create a dynamic new synergy. A new model for humanities / sciences collaboration.

Fuck that. The Organisational Management move is clearly a ritual sacrifice of philosophy – that’s the only way we can make sense of it. it’s a deliberate offering up of philosophy to its very strange gods.

It’d be almost a tribute to us that they’d bother. That they’d think it worthwhile taking out a potential enemy.

Maybe they sense something missing in Organisational Management. A kind of philosophical phantom limb. A dull ache. They want more. They Desire. They Yearn. In their own way. In an Organisational Management way.

What does Organisational Management yearning look like? They’d like to be more than they are. They’re all about logistics. And order. They’re all about procedures. They want something else.  They’re not sure what they want, but they think it might be us.

This merger … This mind meld … Do they want to tame us, or untame themselves? Do they want to tie us up or loosen themselves? Is it about a becoming-Organisational-Management of Philosophy, or a becoming-Philosophy-of-Organisational-Management?

The mystical marriage of Philosophy and Organisational Management. The marriage of heaven and hell, right?

Opposites attract, maybe.

Opposites repel!

It might destroy the universe, you know. Like matter and anti-matter. Because Philosophy is anti-Organisational Management, just as Organisational Management is anti-Philosophy. At opposite poles. Bring them together and you risk tearing the universe apart.

Unless this is just what Philosophy needs. Unless this is what will force Philosophy to, like, become itself. Into pure internal resistance. Crowded into itself. Shoved into itself. Crammed into the tiniest space. And Philosophy, under immense pressure, will become something else. Will change into another state, like solid turning into liquid.

Philosophy, under this kind of pressure, will turn molten. Melt.

Imagining it: magma-philosophy. Lava-philosophy, reading to erupt, madly. Ready to burst, exploding all philosophical sanity. Turning us all into mad geniuses.

You wish! They’re only moving us because Cicero’s gone. They had some respect for Cicero. This … travesty wouldn’t have happened on her watch. I mean, everyone had respect for Cicero. Her, like, chutzpah. Her canniness. Her politicking. And she had the credentials, right? She had the CV. She’d brought in millions in research money.

And she wasn’t just going to cruise to retirement, was she? She had a plan, right? Who else would plan to open a Philosophy department when the university had closed one so emphatically only a few years earlier? How had she created an entirely new philosophy programme of study when the university had shown itself to be utterly allergic to philosophy not so long ago?

How had she done it, when the higher-ups couldn’t even speak about the trauma of closing the old philosophy department? When the memories of the old philosophy clearly made upper and lower management cringe?

But she did it. Cicero did it. Cicero outmanoeuvred the enemy. Cicero boxed very fucking clever. Cicero went the back-door route. Cicero drew upon old allies. Secret connections. She called in some favours. She’d done things for people, and now she wanted things done in return.

How was it possible? But it was possible. A Philosophy department. Philosophy, born again at Newcastle! Philosophy, alive again oh! Philosophy, rising, phoenix-like. Blazing into the sky. And European philosophy, too. The only kind of philosophy that counted for Cicero …

So there we were, Cicero’s secret enclave. Cicero’s pocket of resistance. Cicero’s foxhole, of sorts. A new European philosophy department, at a time when they were closing European philosophy departments. How long were we going to last, once Cicero had gone?

Why did she go?: that’s the question.

We probably disappointed her.

I don’t think we did. She used to listen to us lecture outside the lecture hall. She’d listen in the foyer.

She liked our pathos. Our perspective … The English working class perspective. Real people perspective, she said.

All I remember is Cicero calling us libtards.

That was to train us. To get us used to adversity.

She criticised my shoes. She said they weren’t smart enough.

That was part of the training. She thought you wouldn’t take yourself seriously without proper shoes. Look, you’re wearing them now. Fucking brogues.

And she had a special love for you, Shiva. The way she always kept you back for further instruction. You were, like, her chosen successor. Selected for special attention. As the chosen one. As the future leader. To whom everything was going to be entrusted. [Underleader?]

She made you – you – her successor. She made you Head of Department. What the fuck was that about? Are you ever suspicious, Shiva?

About what?

I mean … come on …

She appointed you, too, Driss. And you, Barbarossa. Fuck – do you remember what you were like when you got here? Fucking nuts …

Remembering. Cicero recruited us. Cicero plucked us from our provincial universities. Cicero,  doing the conferences. Cicero, asking questions: Who should she employ? Who are the best? The brightest? And avoiding the most obviously bright. The most obviously best.

Cicero, showing up at obscure symposia at obscure universities, keeping her eye out. But for what? The put-upon. The cornered. The prospectless. Those who didn’t belong. Ones who had been defeated – spiritually. The desperate – because she thought she could shape something from our desperation. The working class – because she thought she could make something of our working-class-ness. The all but down-and-out.

Our lowly beginnings. Our lack of credentials. The fact that we’d essentially birthed ourselves. That we’d formed ourselves out of nothing. That we’d conjured ourselves from our reading. That we’d emerged from the corners and cracks, from provincial England. From rooms in obscure places.

Our lives of non adventure, non importance. Our lives, in which we’d never travelled. Didn’t know the great capitals of Europe. Had no idea about far flung parts of the world.

Our narrowness! The fact that we’d experienced so little. That we were so uncultured. That we could converse on such a narrow range of subjects. That we were so ungrounded – intellectually, culturally. That we’d sprung out of nowhere; emerged all at once.

Cicero knew the kind of people we were. Without … dimensions. Without breadth. Who’d been isolated. Lost, even. She knew who’d she plucked from obscurity, bringing obscurity with them. She knew we were people of the everyday – people of the outside. From the boondocks, from the provinces. From hidden corners. From cracks and crevices.

Cicero knew we were people from without. Who were part of nothing. Who’d each resigned themselves to a life of futility, a life for nothing, a life out of step, a life untimely, a life outside, a life in the shadows, a life in irrelevance, a life stranded, a life friendless, a life in isolation, a life locked away …

We were Jude-the-Obscures; Thomas-the-Obscures. We surrounded ourselves with books, in the provinces. Buried ourselves with books, in our cracks, in our crevices. By authors no one around us had heard of. Thinkers from forgotten times, irrelevant times.

What we sought in philosophy! The way we invested philosophy with our hopes! With our lives! With our Desire, greater than anything! Only those with empty lives could expect so much from philosophy.

Did Cicero romanticise the working class (us)? No doubt. Did she have great philosophical hopes for the disenfranchised (us)? Of course.

You need philosophy more than I do: she said that once. And what you want from philosophy is greater, too. The way we looked upwards at philosophy – that impressed Cicero. The way we held philosophy above everything. As drowning people look upwards to be saved.

Would-be thinkers are the best thinkers, Cicero said. Thinkers who do not presume they think. For whom thinking itself is a problem, and never straightforward. Thinkers who make a problem of philosophy – of what philosophy is. Of what thought is.

Thought was a matter of life and death to us: Cicero could see that. Philosophy was a question of being able to live. Of not being ashamed of having lived a life. Of not being ashamed of having been human.

A chance: that’s what philosophy was to us. To redeem ourselves. To lift ourselves up. To burn upwards in thought. To offer our lives to something greater.

Our burning hearts. Our burning brains. Our burning eyes. Cicero loved our ardency. Our blazing. Wasn’t that what academia, in its entirety, lacked? Wasn’t that what was missing? We could set the university on fire. Simply burn it up. And wasn’t that what Cicero would like to see?

And we came to Newcastle, full of a desperate intensity! A life-or-death intensity! A desperation! A craving! We came, still in some manic state. After years of living in extremity. After years of part-time teaching. Grinning strangely. Our eyes … The look in our eyes … We were all but frothing at the mouth …

You, too, Barbarossa.

Yes, says Barbarossa. Me, too.

Cicero swept us up in her angel’s wings, we agree. We were saved, lifted, when we didn’t expect to be. We’d escaped, when we never expected to escape …

Unless …, X begins.

Unless what?

Unless Cicero foresaw what was going to happen.

The Organisational Management move?

Unless she staged the whole thing. Putting together a Philosophy department – a European Philosophy department. Now! At the end of history. And the end of times. At the end of everything. The end will bring a carnival of madness, that’s what Cicero knew. And she wanted to contribute to the parade. She want to cultivate … deformities and mutations. Sports. Twistings. Human contortionists. Not physical ones – mental ones. She wanted a veritable freakshow. Like in that Hieronymous Bosch painting. But a freakshow in thought.

Cicero wanted to found a philosophical department for the end of times. When philosophy could only appear in parody, as an inversion of what it was. So she brought us in – we idiots. Cicero wasn’t fooled by our mediocrity – not for a moment. By our triviality. By the pettiness of our concerns. No one should have recruited us – of course not. No one should have brought us here – that’s obvious. Because our role was to be laughable. Was to play our role in parody. A farcical role.

Cicero cast us – us. And who else could she have cast but us? We’re here to do parody philosophy. To busy ourselves with philosophy as farce. And the final move: was the Organisational Management move. The Organisational Management consummation. The completion of the farce. The consummation of the nonsense. Which she unleashed in the first place! Which she set in motion! We’re a joke – don’t you see? Cicero’s joke. Cicero’s last joke.

No – I don’t believe it.

You wouldn’t, Shiva. Cicero was just an impresario of the farce: that’s the truth of it. She knew what philosophy is in this world. The only thing philosophy can be in this world. So she staged the whole thing. She set up a department. Recruited the stupid. Hell, she probably even sold us out to Organisational Management. She probably set up the whole move.

No!

And she made you – you – her successor. She’s made you head of department. A parody head. A headless head. It’s beautiful. What could be more beautiful? She’s probably laughing right now …

Fuck you.

It’s sublime. It’s marvellous. It’s genius in some random way.

It’s not genius, it’s madness.  

That’s my husband texting. He wants to know where I am.

Does he know you’re with me?

Maybe he does.

What are you going to say to him?

That I was with you. Maybe. Not really. I don’t know. I’ll lie.

What will you say?

That I had a migraine. That I had to go back to my office to lie down.

Won’t he come looking for you?

He knows I like to be alone sometimes. And he wouldn’t be so tasteless to pursue me. He knows I’m a little mad. He doesn’t understand me. That I need to be alone. That I needed some darkness.

They’re closing the European philosophy departments down, one by one. The lights are going out, one by one.

And the departments that remain are being infiltrated. Are being hollowed out from within. Are becoming faux European philosophy departments. European philosophy done in the analytic style, if that were possible. In the Anglo-American style! What a joke.

At least we never tried that. At least we haven’t tried to dress it up as what it was not, European philosophy. Of course, we couldn’t do it, we’re incapable of it, analytic philosophy, of analytic philosophy logic, just as we’re incapable of European philosophy, or European philosophy non-logic.

But we’re drawn to European philosophy, as we’re not to analytic philosophy. We’re drawn to it, even as we cannot do it, and in so doing preserve it as European philosophy, as what we cannot do, but want to do, and not as anything else. As what we cannot do – for reasons of intellect, perhaps, or for reasons of education.

But for reasons of temperament, too. For isn’t our temperament a British one? Doesn’t it mean that we cannot think – not as they think, the philosophers we admire. We haven’t got it. We don’t have it – but at least we know that. At least we don’t present it as what it’s not. It has its own styles, its own tones, its own modus operandi – all those things are clear. But at least we know it. At least we’re not pretenders – in this regard. We’re not liars – about this. We preserve a relation to European philosophy in our very stupidity.

Knowing our stupidity – that’s the thing. It’s our idiocy, our perfect inability to philosophise, that is greatest testimony to European philosophising. We give testimony to the full sweep of European though by virtue of our total incompetence at any and all aspects of European philosophy.

We keep its place. We tell our students that they, too, will be unable to understand European philosophy, and unable, above all, to do European philosophy. But they’re to remember it nonetheless. They’re to feel their stupidity nonetheless. Experience their parochialism. Suffer it! Suffer their own incapacity! Endure their own foolishness! Hold it open, their lack! Of what they do not have and will never have.

You can have no philosophical ambition: that’s what we tell them, over and over. You will never be able to do anything philosophically – not European-philosophically. It’s beyond you! You can’t reach it! You can’t go there. We’re dead, deader than dead, when it comes to European philosophy. All we can do is point to it. All we can do is indicate there really is such a thing. Or was. Across the channel. On the continent.

Philosophy is real, as we are not. Philosophy is full, as we are not. Never mind us! Don’t bother with us! We’re not important! Our kind are irrelevant! Forgotten. We’re like British surrealists, or something. No one will remember us. Not one will know we exist, not really. We’ll have got no legacy. Our PhD students won’t find jobs. They won’t become lecturers. They won’t go on to other departments.

We’re dying on the vine. The hegemony of analytic philosophy is complete – in the UK. The Anglophone world has fallen, when it comes to European philosophy.

We know our role. We’re legatees. Memory-keepers. We’re inheritors. We keep the place for real thinkers who might come along one day.

We know our flaws. We’re humble, if nothing else. We’re base. We have no pretensions. We sing the song of absence. We play our blue guitars.

But isn’t there a hope against hope that we have, that we share? Isn’t there an expectation in us, despite everything. A messianic faith. Aren’t we ready, despite it all, for the British thinkers to come? For the British European philosophers? For the students of our students of our students. Who will come at an hour when we do not expect them. The European philosophy rapture, coming upon us like a thief. The other beginning of European philosophy, even as Satan’s wrath is poured out on the earth.

And those who teach European philosophy will rise, meeting each other in the air. Those who knew that teaching would fall as pearls before swine. Those who published articles and books knowing it was in vain. Those who ran journals knowing their pointlessness. Those who organised conferences in the full awareness of their futility. Those who ran publishing series as though for nothing.

Won’t they wipe away every tear from our eyes, the British European philosophers to come? Won’t they come as conquering kings and queens, to establish their rein? Won’t there be no more death or mourning or crying or pain? Won’t the old order of things have passed away?

Which is why we can approach the last days without fear. Which is why we can bear our mediocrity without rancour. Because we’re keeping a place for what is to come. Because we’re keeping a seat at our table for the thinkers to come. Because we’re waiting for a knock at the door for our messianic successors.

We’re inconvenient. We’re in the way. We require retraining – decades of retraining. Don’t bother with us, we want to say. It’s too late for us. We’ll be too much trouble. We don’t want you to waste your time.

Haven’t you got other things to do? we want to say. Aren’t there more pressing matters to which you have to attend? We’re a lost cause – all but lost. We’re a time-consuming cause. We’re too much!

Aren’t there things to organise! we want to say. Things to manage! Other than us! Everyone’s busy! Everyone’s pushed for time!

We’re stubborn, we want to say. We’re stuck in our ways. Why trouble yourselves with us? Seriously, it’s not worth it. We’re the last people you should be bothering with.

Which, for them, means we’re the first people they should bother with. If they can crack us, they can crack anyone. If they can discipline philosophy, then the university is theirs. If they can bring philosophy to heel! If they can show philosophy who’s boss! If they can train the untrainable! Manage the unmanageable! … Then the secret of world domination is theirs.

We were in a state of perfection before we existed – that’s what the Gnostics said. Imagine it! A world without us. Where we had never been born. And, better still: imagine the state of perfection before the world existed. Before anything existed.

Absolute calm. Deep sleep. The dreaming calm. Dreaming of all the things that might be, but aren’t. Dreaming of the possibility of things that could be, but aren’t. Dreaming of the world that could come, but might not. And falling back into itself again, perfect.

Just … non existence. Just nothingness. Turning in itself. Before anything. In some deep sleep. Untroubled. And turning in its sleep.

 

We’re contemplative of the nothing. Of absolute calm.

The nonexistence of things: that’s what concerns us. The nothingness at the heart of it all.

The creation was a mistake. Our being born: a metaphysical affront. That we exist: a terror. A horror.

 

Judgement has been passed upon our lives. We have merely to carry out the sentence.

We know what we have to do. Killing ourselves would unconfuse things. Would clear our heads.

Suicide: our declaration of independence. From the world! From everything!

We are in no one’s power when death is in our power, and all that.

 

We were brought into the world. Isn’t that terrible enough? Isn’t that already a crime – a terrible crime?

We’ll be God’s exterminating angels for him. We’ll exterminate ourselves.

The Organisational Management campus.

We didn’t ask to be brought here. Could we have been left to expire in some corner?

This isn’t for us, this place. We don’t have great ambitions. There’s not much to us. We wanted to get by, that’s all. An academic job … that was enough … To be able to teach … To pass on what little we knew …

Couldn’t we just have been quietly let go? Couldn’t our department have been simply dissolved? Couldn’t we just have been taken aside and shot, God knows …

Why did they bring us here? Why did we have to be remade?

 

What we are, what we do: a symptom of the dying of philosophy. Of the humanities. Of the liberal arts.

Our gloom is the glom of philosophy. Our despair is the despair of the humanities.

 

The humanities in decline – that’s all we are. Nothing else. We’re easily explained. Easily diagnosed.

The agonies of a dying tradition. Of a defunct subject area. Of a way of life. A way of study.

Paideia in decline. In agony. In self-torture. In self-rending. As it tries to justify itself and fails. As it endeavours to sell itself and runs aground. As it tries to hold itself together and fails. As it attempts to give good reasons for its existence, to justify itself in its enemies terms and fails. As it is entirely infiltrated by analytic philosophers …

They’re doing this to mock us. They’re laughing at us. This is their idea of a joke.

They’re making a joke of our lives. Our whole lives: for their entertainment.

They like to watch us run around in so-called freedom. They enjoy our faux-philosophical escapades. They love our position-striking. Our play-acting. Our believing ourselves to be revolutionaries, or whatever.

Our faux despair. Our faux philosophising and faux reading. Our faux everything. They love all that. Our faux-apocalypticism. Our version of desperation. Our cries, our gasps …

*They allowed us our little rebellion because they thought it was funny. They like to laugh at the flies, because that’s what we are – flies, to them. Flies to ourselves. Buzzing around the corpse of freedom of thought. Of philosophy.

 

They don’t even have to bother to interrogate us, let alone torture us. Let alone try to rehabilitate to us. To spend time trying to covert us. They don’t need to bother with all that.

It won’t be like O’Brien, torturing poor Winston Smith. Paying Smith all that attention. Spending all that time with Smith. There’s no need for that. They don’t have to bother.

 

The real kindness would be death – to die. To let us die. To snuff us out. But they’re not going to do that, are they? They’re going to let us live on. As the last philosophers. The las humanities lecturers. The last humans – why not?

 

Killing us would be a mercy. Letting us kill ourselves would be one, too.

That won’t be allowed. That won’t happen. We have to serve out our sentence. On the Organisational Management campus.

 

They should just let us just disappear quietly. No one should notice. Let us just slip away. We’ll go out. Discreetly. Without drawing attention to ourselves. Without fuss. That’s how it should be. That’s apt.

The end should be .. disappointing. A fizzling out. Without publicity. Without mourning. Just … a passing over. A going across. A simple … expiration.

They could just have brought in analytic philosophers to replace us one by one. When we retired. When we resigned. There’d be three of us left, then two and then … well, it would be obviously untenable, wouldn’t it?

We need despair. We need to think from despair. Despair is true, right?

I’ll bet androids don’t despair. Or synths.

Exactly!

 

We have to hate and we have to despair. We have to live the horror. Keep our minds on the worst. .

Don’t let them cheer us up. Don’t let them bring us on side. Don’t smile! Don’t laugh with them. Don’t shar their good cheer. Make sure!

 

They want to take our despair from us. They want to free us from our despair. We need to hold onto it.

They don’t want us to hate.

 

We have to bring our whole selves to work – that’s what they told me in management training. We’re not allowed alienation. We’re not allowed to hold anything back. They want what we are. Everything we have. Even our resistance. They want that, too. Even our objections.

And our despair – do they want our despair?

They think they can change that. Convert it.

I don’t believe you’re a sham. No one thinks you’re a sham. My husband doesn’t.

He couldn’t tell the difference.

So what are you going to do, Dr Sham? Kill yourself?

I’m not even going to kill myself. I’m not even going to do anything. I’m just going to live and live and live.

As a sham?

As a sham.

Don’t you think all your favourite philosophers thought they were shams?

Yes, but they weren’t shams.

They must have thought they were shams, though, right? I reckon they’d be telling someone like me on a night something like this that they were shams, wouldn’t they?

 

I like you, philosopher. I like that you’re so … self-deprecating. And torn. And despairing. My poor despairing philosopher … My poor, lost philosopher …

Now you’re being patronising.

My poor sensitive philosopher. Too good for the world …

You’re laughing at me. Which is good – I need laughing at.

 

I’m sham. I don’t speak any of the languages, for one thing. And I haven’t even been to Paris or Berlin or any of those places. I’m a provincial.

Have you been to Amsterdam – on the ferry? You can sail directly there from the Port of Tyne. Takes 12 hours or so. Maybe we should escape to Amsterdam, philosopher.

 

So we’ve brought a sham Philosophy unit into Organisational Management.

You have.

And I’m giving a sham philosopher a tour of the Apex …

You are.

 

We’re living on the fumes of philosophy. We’re flies living on the corpse of philosophy. All we do is write secondary commentary.

 

Black humour is humour that knows the world can’t be fixed. It’s apocalyptic, not ameliorative.

I like that word: ameliorative. I like the opposition you made. Nice and alliterative. It sounds very clever, though it might just be pretentious. Something you’ve thought about. And written about, probably … Of course, the thing I want to know is whether I’m apocalyptic enough for you, philosopher. Am I dead enough?

 

You’ll have everyone here persuaded that you’re a philosopher. You look the part. We’ll all be very impressed. You’ll walk by, and we’ll think, There goes the philosopher.

Fuck off.

We won’t know any better. We wouldn’t know a philosopher from … a velociraptor. We can’t judge. We’re only Organisational managers … We only know Organisational Management, nothing else … You’ll be a philosophy exotic. A humanities exotic! We’ll look upon you with wonder.

Fuck off some more.

 

You’re very pessimistic, I can tell. You think you’re defeated – your kind. You think your kind are finished. The humanities kind. The philosophy kind. The in-love-with-Old-Europe kind. You think you’re a dying breed. And perhaps you’re right.

Except that I don’t think I belong to it: the dying breed. I think I’m only keeping the memory of a breed who’ve already died out. Who’ve already disappeared. What they wanted to belong to, what they want to think was a dream then, and now it’s a dream of a dream. It’s all forgotten.

All your mourning, philosopher. Your relationship to the past. Endlessly playing the Last Post … It’s all mourning, and nothing new. Whereas this is all new – the campus is new. Organisational Management is new.

Let’s walk and talk forever. Actually, it’s like we’re already walking and talking forever. In forever. In eternity.

What do you mean?

It’s like in Winnie the Pooh. Do you remember what it said on the last page? ‘Wherever they go, and whatever happens to the on the way, in that enchanted place in the forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing’. That’s eternity.

In eternity, you’re a child forever. Do you want to be a child again?

I didn’t even like being a child the first time round.

What would you do, in eternity? Walk and talk just like this. With someone I barely know.

 

This is the best kind of talk there is. When you don’t know who I am, and I don’t know who you are. It’s, like, suspension. It’s hovering. Before anything begins.

It’s like we’re opening time. Opening an avenue in time together. Like a tunnel in time, as we walk.

I wish things could stay like this forever. Before all the compromises. And the negotiations. And the resentments. And the irritations. If you actually knew things about me, you’d be annoyed.

Are you annoying?

I can be.