Work in Progress

Do you think this night is going to add up to anything? Do you think we’ll remember it, tonight? Wandering these corridors? Do you think we’ll remember what we’re saying now – right now? This conversation?


Do you ever feel everything you say is in quotes, like it’s been said before? By someone else, maybe. Or by us in another life … Do you ever feel that all this happened before, and we’re just living it again? That all this is part of the whole of life flashing before your eyes as you die?


Do you ever think it’s all been said before – that everything’s been said before? That we can’t say a single new thing? … It’s like all the words have already been prepared. All the scripts for lovers’ talk. All the things lovers have said. And we only get to quote …


Do you worry that we’ll never get to the point? That we’ll never talk about what really concerns us – what’s really important? Do you ever think that everything we say just gets in the way?


All the stuff we’re saying echoes with something. What’s important is the echoing. What echoes through what we say.

What is it? Some great rumbling. A roaring – but very far away.

Something important has happened. Something broke through. Something was allowed through.


Here, at the heart of the Organisational Management campus … everything begins again. We’ve been given a chance.


We have to whisper it. Whisper it, philosopher. Say forbidden things. Here, tonight. Whisper them to me …

We’ve walked and talked the world away. We’ve disappeared it, the world. We’ve destroyed the world.

Have we? It’s still there.

We’ve destroyed the world in us.


We’ve walked and talked ourselves into eternity. Did you know that could happen? We walked and talked ourselves out of the regular universe. And I was very tired of the regular universe.

Have you escaped too, philosopher – or is it just me? Am I the only one who got out? Who escaped? This is probably how you live all the time.

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 things up. An avenue in time …

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

Are you annoying?

I can be.

I’ve never had an affair, you know. I’ve never been tempted. I’ve never strayed. Oh I snogged a guy in New Zealand once. (Do you like that word, snogged? I saw you flinch.) But that didn’t count. I was on a kinda late gap year. Because I didn’t have one earlier on.

I want to say to my husband: I miss you, even when I’m with you. But that doesn’t seem very fair, does it?

Doing something together. Being together together. That’s enough, isn’t it? Sharing whatever it is we share.

It’s about what you can’t help being. About how you show what you really are. How do you give yourself away, philosopher. Your … mannerisms. Your gestures. Your quirks. Your idiosyncrasies. All those things about you that are most you. Inconsequential things, maybe. That are just your way of being you. No one but you.

We have a corner of the night all to ourselves.

Nothing matters in the night of the world. None of the normal rules apply. They’re all suspended.

It’s like in the Blitz. People fucked illicitly in the night. They got away with anything. And so will we.

The point is to affirm idiocy, Livia mused. Not to see it as a deficiency. Not to see ourselves as lacking anything. But we were incapable of that.

We were perfect idiots, in her eyes. Beautiful idiots. Beautiful in our idiocy and because of it.

Dwelling in idiocy. In a whole ethos of idiocy – a way of perceiving and engaging with the world, with ourselves, with others …

Perhaps it takes a non-idiot to understand it, Livia said. A non- idiot standing outside it. Who’s not part of it. Who doesn’t dwell within it.


At least we’re amused by our stupidity, Livia said. At least it diverts us.

From what?

From our stupidity of course.


Livia’s love of her idiots. Of idiots.

She was grateful for idiocy, Livia said. For what idiocy had brought her. For us! For her idiot squad.

What hadn’t we taught her – or untaught her? What hadn’t we got wrong and therefore got right?

What blows on the brain hadn’t we dealt her? Great blows! Laughing blows! Gladdening blows!


The intricacies of our idiocy. Its filigree. It’s delicacy, even. Idiocy could be quite a refined thing. Like some complex confectionary.

The taste of such delicate idiocy. The savouring of such idiocy. Only a connoisseur of idiocy, like Livia, could really appreciate it. It’s too bad we never learnt to appreciate it ourselves. Too bad that we were incapable of enjoying our idiocy. But that would require a non-idiocy that none of us possessed.


Our wager: that we might have something to say as idiots – as philosophical idiots. But we don’t know how – or why. We’re too idiotic for that.

Are we fundamental idiots, or just idiots? How deep is our idiocy – that’s the question. How far down does it go?


Is there such a thing as an idiot’s philosophy? Or does idiocy always fall short of philosophy? Can you philosophise from your idiocy – or do you have to philosophise against it?

Our questions. The questions of idiots. But are the question of idiots idiotic questions?

Philosophical idiocy – is it the same as idiotic philosophy? The same thing? The idiocy of philosophy and the philosophy of idiocy: what’s the difference?


Have we ever really reached it, our stupidity? Livia wondered. Where we could really come into our stupidity? Own up to it? Inherit it?

Will we ever be able to inhabit it, our stupidity? Dwell in it.

Have we really been released into our stupidity?


Livia, too, was an agent of Stupidity, the greater Stupidity. She, too, was a servant of forces beyond her control. She, like us, served Idiocy and the self-seeking of Idiocy.

Idiocy’s desire to come to itself. To breathe real breaths. To live, for a while in the world. To attain itself in the world. To be there, for a moment, amongst us.


We should let our idiocy be idiocy: that’s what Livia told us. It was more than accepting our idiocy. More than reconciling ourselves to our idiocy. It was affirming it, our idiocy.

Let us be these idiots: that’s what we should say to ourselves. Let us step into our idiocy.

Let us be, really be these idiots. Let us own our idiocy – not fight against it. Let idiocy be the seed from which it would grow, our non-intellectual life.

Our idiocy, and the sources of our idiocy. It was channelling the greater Idiocy of which our idiocy was a part.


It’s still to come, in a way, the opening of our idiocy. It’s still ahead of us. We’re still waiting for it. We’ve yet to come into our own, as idiots.

Livia’s waiting, too. Livia’s excited. Livia knows that it isn’t here yet, but that it will be. She’s waiting to see what we will do. She’s waiting to see what her charges will do, when idiocy arrives.


Idiocy Itself. Capital I, for Itself. Idiocy, arriving. Idiocy, coming. Idiocy, terrifying – great. Like an angel. Are there angels of idiocy?


Might there be another name for idiocy? Might it be, innocence? Might there be such a thing as a divine idiocy? As a messianic idiocy?

Is there an idiot messiah, a messiah of idiocy? Is idiocy arriving as the messiah, and as nothing other than the messiah?


An idiocy that had yet to arrive, in some sense. An idiocy that hadn’t met with itself. That didn’t coincide with itself.

An idiocy that had yet to look at itself in the mirror. That had yet to bear its own gaze. That had yet to look back at itself, reflected. That had yet to say, I am idiocy, destroyer of worlds.


Drunkenly contemplating it, our stupidity. Drunkenly pleased with it and pleased with ourselves for noticing it.

This is how we entertain ourselves. This is how stupidity entertains itself, passes the hours.

Amazing that we can just entertain ourselves like this, for hour after hour. But isn’t that the truest sign of our stupidity: that we can entertain ourselves like this, for hour after hour?


Stupidity explosions, deep underground.

Stupidity bombs, dropping from the sky. Storms of stupidity, the sky darkening.

A roaring stupidity. An angry stupidity.

A greater stupidity. God’s stupidity, if there can be such a thing.


Stupidity, trying to sound its depths. Failing to sound its depths. Stupidity, pondering its own abyss. Failing to ponder its own abyss.


What makes us think that we’re especially stupid? Isn’t that a kind of hubris? I mean, why should we suppose that here’s something special about our stupidity? Something that sets it apart?


Livia used to speak of the stupidity of the humanities. Identical with the studiousness of the humanities. With the stupefaction of the humanities. With the idiocy of the humanities.


What there is to be thought: stupidity. What stands in the way of stupidity being thought: stupidity.


Stupidity’s the only thing we have. The only thing that might save us.

From what?

From knowing our stupidity, of course.


What’s the opposite of a savant? The opposite of a prodigy? Is there such a thing as a genius of stupidity?

Remembering how Livia used to quiz me about it: my literaro-philosophical writing. My philosophico-literary writing.

She used to make me tell it to her again: how I worked on my philosophico-literary writing in my Hertfordshire University years. In my commuting between campuses of Hertfordshire years. The Aldenham campus. The St Albans campus. The Hatfield campus. As I commuted to and from Watford, where I had my bedsit. Where I scraped by on my part-time wage, on the Hertfordshire plain. On my paid-by-the-hour wage.

It might seem that there was an infinite distance between Watford and my literaro-philosophy project, Livia used to marvel. Between my total bus-dependency and my philosophico-literary dreams.

Listening to Penderecki on the extra-slow bus between the campuses of Hertfordshire University. Reading Mandelstam on the stopping-everywhere bus. Listening to Ligotti, on the requiring-infinite-patience bus. Reading Helene Cixous on the stuck-in-varoius-traffic-jams bus.

And working in a department actually hostile to European philosophy. That papered its walls with articles warning about the perils of European philosophy. Of the charlatanry of European philosophy! Claiming that Deleuze was a fraud! That Derrida was an impostor! Reviews of forensic accounts of Heidegger’s Nazism! Of Carl Schmitt’s Nazism! Of Paul de Man’s fascist past! Reviews of Intellectual Impostures. Of Fashionable Nonsense. All that kind of stuff.

My Hertfordshire years might seem entirely inimical to my philosophical ambitions, let alone my literaro-philosophical ones. And wasn’t I busy not just writing philosophy papers (my so-called philosophy papers), but with my literaro-philosophical musings? Wasn’t I at work not merely sending my academic papers out to academic journals (my so-called academic papers), but working frenziedly on my philosophico-literary writings?

Returning, after a day on the buses, to my Watford bedsit! Opening up my notebook in my Watford bedsit! Sipping my coffee and preparing to write, in my Watford bedsit! But wasn’t that the perfect place to write about my philosophical failure?, Livia said. Wasn’t it the perfect situation to bring together my philosophical incapableness with my literary incapableness. With the latter feeding the former. And the former feeding the latter. In perfect philosophico-literary feedback!

What genius: to write of my failure in the midst of failure. To write, in literary failure, of my philosophical failure. What ambition, which was disguised as anti-ambition.

There I was, reading Hélène Cixous in Watford, Livia said. Hidden from my colleagues, and the contempt of my colleagues! There I was, reading Maurice Blanchot. And Georges Bataille! An Marguerite Duras! And Clarice Lispector!

There I was, reading books that flaunted their philosophico-literariness, their literaro-philosophicalness, practically under cover! All but in enemy territory!

And dreaming of that my work might be the last literary gasp, the last philosophical gasp of that great European tradition. That it was all to end with me – to fall with me, in the farce of my literaro-philosophical writing.

I was on the verge of some great literary or non-literary breakthrough: that’s what I believed, wasn’t it? This was my equivalent of Beckett’s walk on the pier. Of Blanchot being put up against the wall to be shot. Of Cixous seeing that squirrel in Manhattan! I was the writer of the farce – of the farce that writing, and especially European style literaro-philosophy had become!