Work in Progress

Of course, our madness is really a counter-madness. Our madness is really a madness against their madness. Against their delirium. It’s a protective madness, of a sort. It’s a sheltering madness.

This is God’s suicide watch. God’s looking down at us.


Emergency extraction, that’s what we need. To be beamed the fuck up.


At least we can share the despair.

Have you got any Heideggerian poems memorised? I always liked those.

Helmut, silent.

How about you – any Bataillean poems that you know by heart?

Shaking my head.

I’d settle for a psalm. Recite a good psalm, Io.


I’ve always thought of you as an emotional support Heideggerian.


Heidegger was the equivalent of a Geordie, Livia told us. He had a strong regional accent. Wore regional clothes. Lederhosen, in his case. Used to yodel on the weekend with Gadamer. Solidly lower middle class. One of the reasons he became a nazi.

We’re like some weird fucked up family.


You be Heidegger. You be Levinas. You be Deleuze. You be … someone more obscure.

Canguilhem

Ooh, good one.


Let’s do Heidegger versus Cassirer.

It’s like children playing mummies and daddies. Do they do that anymore?

I wish the disaster would hurry up and come.

We’ll be the first to go under.

Good. I want to go under.


The disintegration loop of our lives.


Why can’t we just be nuked from orbit?


We’ve got nothing to offer but blackpills and bitterness.


‘Twere better nothing would begin’: that’s what Mephisto says. In Goethe’s Faust.

Analytic philosophy that no one reads. Analytic thought that no one cares about except analytics. Analytic papers and papers and papers, all in the same unbearable lingo.

Whereas we have Nazis. And fascists. And dubious kinds of all stripes. And collaborators.


Analytic philosophy dullness, as opposed to European philosophy wildness.

Analytic smallsouledness, in contrast to European expansiveness.

Analytic conservatism versus European radicalism

Analytic preserve-things-as-they-are-ism against European explode all-things-ism. Against European apocalypse. Against European incendiarism. Against the European earthquake. Against European world-rejection. Against European Gnosticism.

A literary Hindu – intriguing. A literary-philosophical Hindu – even more intriguing. A Hindu with European pretentions – still more intriguing.

If it wasn’t for Livia’s fishing in fetid waters. Casting her net into the dead pool. Into loser’s lagoon. Into the part-time sink hole. If it wasn’t for Livia, rummaging around in the box of broken biscuits …


The last conference we’d paid to come to. Our last hope. With our last money. Where we couldn’t afford the conference dinner. The conference drinks. Where we’d booked only the shittiest rooms. The earliest morning talk slots.

The last conference! With our last desperation. Hauling ourselves with the last strength we could muster. For one last chance. One last round. One last attempt to get our names known! To try and find our way onto an interview list. Or to break open a new seam of part time work, at least.


Ah, but we gave up, soon enough. We crashed and burned, soon enough.

Sure, we met each other. Sure, we found one another. At the bottom of the pit! Of the same funnel. We found ourselves in company. So called company. We’d stopped just dying for a moment. Pressed pause on the suicidal ideation, for a time at least.

And there was Livia, come to save us.


Had Livia not decided to back the losers. Had Livia not gone fishing in part time waters to see what she’d pull up. In our cess pit! Our dead pool!

Had Livia not gone prospecting at dodgy conferences. Had she not repeatedly asked for advice about who she’d hire and then proceed in the opposite direction. Had she not approached the ones she’d been warned against. Not the academic stars, but the academic losers …


She wanted lecturers who wouldn’t just fly the coop. Who wouldn’t simply get jobs elsewhere. She wanted people who’d stick around. Who’d be malleable, a little. She wanted lecturers who’d be grateful for the chance. Who’d be happy to be have been given a job. An opportunity.

And she landed her fish. We were flopping around on her deck.

The old campus.

Is that what they’re calling it now?

That’s what I’m calling it. It’s almost deserted.

They’ll moving the History of Art next. And English Literature.

The days of the humanities are numbered. They don’t know it yet. The writing’s on the wall. It’s already ended. Spiritually. It’s over.

Do you think?

The humanities are in the past. Come on. It’s inevitable. It’s thermodynamics. Everything … dissipates. They’re just following the logic of all things.

None of them spoke up for us – the other subjects. None of them objected to our Organisational Management move. First they came for the philosophers, and I kept silent …

So they deserve what they get. The humanities deserve it. Why should we give a fuck?

It’s always ruins with us. We’ve always come after it, the real thing. The party’s always and already over. Everything’s in the past.

Except we’ve been invited to a party in the ruins. A postgraduates’ party.

Why did they want to invite us? We’re so old …

Maybe the postgraduates are planning something. They’re very mysterious.

A party – is that what we really need?

You’ve got to admit, it’s intriguing.

A saving power party – that’s what they called it on the invites.

When the darkness grows, there too grows the saving power. That old cliché.

Who is it they want to save?

Themselves. All of us. The whole universe. I don’t fucking know.

Well, it’s too late for the campus. It’s all … just … ruins.

Sure: the darkness grows, the desert grows, all that stuff.

Our descent.

Do we want to bring the dead back to life, or something.

What dead?

The dead of the old department. Do we want to bring them to life? To retrieve them, like Eurydice.

Eury-who?

The one Orpheus was trying to bring back from the dead.

What would we do with the old department?

They could save us.

Could they, though?

It was a real department – not like ours. It had its own culture, it’s way of doing things. It had its standards. Its notable names. It lasted a while. Thirty years or so. From just after the war to the 1980s. Students remembered it lovingly.

There was a room set aside for debate, most of the day. The Cave, they called it. With some staff member always in attendance, ready for any kind of philosophical talk.

We would never have got into the old department, you know. As students, I mean. We didn’t have the A level grades.

All the better.

We couldn’t have participated in any of their debates. We could never have been part of their philosophical to and fro.

Exactly so.

We wouldn’t have known what to do there. We’re not intellectuals.

We don’t want to retrieve anything. We don’t want Eurydice. We don’t want the old department.

We want in its death. We want what cannot be.

What do you mean? We want it in its impossibility – in the impossibility of that kind of philosophy. In the humanities of the old days. We want our Eurydice forever dead. We want everything dead. We want the endless death of philosophy and the humanities.


We want the dead Eurydice, not the one who can be brought back to life. We want the buried as the buried. The forgotten as the forgotten. We want the dark as the dark. The hidden as the hidden.

We want the forever dead. The death deeper than death. The preliminary flood that’s already washed everything away …


We want to retrieve the old department. We want a taste of what the university used to be. We want the old standards. An academic world that makes sense. Before mass higher education. Before grade inflation. Before the vast press of student numbers. Back when students were educable. When they actually turned up. When they actually had things to say in seminars.

Before the collapse! Before our kind were allowed to run amuck! Back when our kind were kept well away! When our type could only dream of a life in the academy!


But we can’t want that – not really. We can’t what would totally exclude us. What would turn us into Jude the Obscures. Into Thomas the Obscures!


We want to encounter with terroir of all things. The ur-terroir. Out of which everything grows. The terroir of all terrors. The root.