Work in Progress

Cicero admired us, in some way. 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 lives in rooms, reading books. Our lives, laptops open, tip-tapping away.

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 …

Cicero knew we’d already given up. That we were reigned to isolation, to being misunderstood, to lives on benefits. She knew that all the doors were closed to us. That we were Jude the Obscures; Thomas the Obscures. That we were on the outside, and permanently so. That the academic world wasn’t for us – it was other people.

We surrounded ourselves with books, in the provinces. We were buried in books, in our cracks, in our crevices. And we knew no one else who read such things. Who knew about such things. Our culture heroes that no one around us had heard of. Thinkers from forgotten times, irrelevant times. Writers from some literary time that was no longer. What we sought in philosophy! What we looked for in literature! Hopeless impractical! Hopelessly out of time!

The way we invested philosophy with our hopes. With our lives. With our Desire, greater than anything. The way we placed all our ardency in literature. The way we read it in our Despair – and our desire to escape from Despair.

Philosophy! only those with empty lives could expect so much from it. Literature! Only those utterly lost could expect it to find them. It impressed Cicero, who had it all at her fingertips. In her book lined study. With books in several languages.

Did Cicero romanticise the working class (us)? No doubt. Did she have great philosophical hopes for the disenfranchised (us)? Of course. Did she have great literary dreams for the lost (us)? Without doubt.

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 literature above everything. As drowning people look upwards to be saved.

We were creatures of the depths. Dwellers in the lowlands. 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 being 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?

We were on first names with death: Cicero could see that. Old friends. We knew death, and death knew us. We knew the world out there would lead us to our deaths. Our early deaths, our violent deaths. We knew the world out there had no place for us, for our kind.

And the idea of death had been a comfort to us, Cicero knew that. It had made life bearable to us. And death was something of which not to be afraid. Death: finality. A final term. Finitude – release.

And now, with our jobs, that life had become more bearable for us? Now that the thought of death was no longer a comfort? Now that death had backed away for a while; now that death was held in abeyance for a while?

Cicero knew that death was still there, at the end of our nights. She knew that death still surrounded us like a miasma, like a halo.

The old philosophy department – back when they still had departments. Back when they weren’t just units. The philosophy department of yore. That had survived decades before it was closed. The love its former students had for the old philosophy department. Even the fame of the old philosophy department.

Which wasn’t at all geared up for what academia became, back in the ‘80s. Which wasn’t part of the Research Assessment Exercise world! Which wasn’t part of the league-table world! Of the National Student Survey world! Which wasn’t part of the everything-is-measurable world! Of the all-is-quantifiable world! Of the publish or perish world.

And of course, they didn’t publish, so they perished. They were biding their time. Thinking their thoughts. Actually studying. Actually discussing ideas. Naturally, it had to close. Naturally, it had to go! It had to be wiped out! Its memory destroyed.

The old philosophy department. Only the oldest academics remember it! And some of them, with a tear in the eye. Some of them, voices shaking, who remember  what happened. By the blindness of management. The tearing-apart of the old academic culture. The work of decades. A philosophical culture, carefully forged, carefully honed.

And we, to think, were the new philosophy department. But hidden! Under another degree title, History of Ideas. Under another course code. And concealed, in the Centre for Thought. Pretending to be something else: a wise move. A wise stratagem. Not drawing attention to itself.

A crypto-department. Hidden, for the moment. Until we’d reached sufficient numbers. Until we’d grown enough to come into our own – to emerge as a philosophy department at last, unafraid and unabashed. But until then … we were a secret. We were hidden.

Because if it was known that the university harboured a crypto-philosophy, we would only have attracted the wrong kind of attention. If our existence were not carefully concealed, then our enemies would make their move  – out of jealousy, or incomprehension, out of enmity for thought; or even because of the troubled memories that the closure of the old philosophy department stirred up.

Because that’s how they were seen the old philosophy department: as trouble. As difficulty. As an obstacle. To the seamless transformation of the university.

The old department didn’t struggle with the university. They didn’t fight. They simply continued to do what they did. They ignored the dictates. Simply continued with their philosophising.

Which is exactly the reason that they were regarded as trouble! Which was precisely the rationale for closing them at once! A university without a philosophy department: unthinkable, once upon a time. Inconceivable, not so long ago. But the university didn’t mind. The university was unbothered.

And if we showed ourselves too soon, then we’d meet the same fate. If our existence was known … But as it was, thanks to Cicero, virtually no one knew about us. We were a secret, owing to Cicero. We were hidden under the aegis of The Centre for Thought – an innocuous title, but shelter enough.

We knew that it would be some time before we could roll away our stone. Emerge, intact as a philosophy department unto itself, successful, which the university wouldn’t dare to close. We knew it would be a while before we’d be out in the open: a philosophy department, a real one, conjured apparently from virtually nothing, with all the departmental paraphernalia – with external examiners, with external validation, with correct paperwork. Created it would seem pretty much ex nihilo, with all the accoutrements of a successful department, with robust student numbers, with well-published and respected staff, with representation on all the major faculty boards. Philosophy had just bootstrapped itself into existence, straight into the league tables, recruiting forty of fifty students a year, contributing very meaningfully to the university coffers: that’s how it would appear.

And in the meantime? We skulked. We kept out of sight. No one knew about us. And they didn’t know what they didn’t know. We kept undercover. Samizdat. Keeping quiet. Talking to no one. You never know who’s on who’s side, Cicero told us. Who might say the wrong thing. Even if they meant well. Even if they wanted to champion us. The wrong word in the wrong ear, and we’d be closed.

Underground philosophy. Secret philosophy. In, like, a cave beneath the uni. No one knew we existed, not really. Hidden-in-a-basement philosophy.But there was freedom in that. We could do teach we liked. Write what we liked …

But then Cicero left. Cicero disappeared. Why then – at that moment? Were we successful enough to stand on our own two feet? Had we consolidated our position enough to survive long term? Did we have prospects now? Would we survived if our existence was revealed?  

Cicero must have known what was going to happen. The Organisational Management move … so terrible swift. All at once. With sublime force. The decision to move Philosophy to Organisational Management! Striking down from high! Like lightning! A Decision had been made!

We’d been seen! Our rock had been lifted! Publicity! Light! Managers banged tables. We were to be moved! Our fate had been decided!

And of course, we were frightened. We weren’t used to the attention. We wanted the darkness back. We wanted our peace and quiet. We wanted the lack of scrutiny we used to enjoy. We wanted to be undistracted from our labours – from our teaching, from our writing.

But now the university was peering at us. The university was making Decisions. Now: scrutiny. Now, the university peering at us. And Cicero wasn’t there to help us! No more cover! No more silence! No more peace! No more darkness!

The organisational managers bought their postgraduates from a plan. They actually built their postgraduates. Not like ours, who are human all too human. Who are pure angst, for the most part. Who are worse than us, for the most part. More deranged. Barely socialised. Seriously depressed.

They’re on edge as it is. They’re serious mentally ill as it. Life is a continual torment for them as it is. Why did the organisational managers demand that our PhD students come, too? Why did they want to meet the jewels of the humanities? Of philosophy? Don’t they know how extreme their mental states are? How fragile they are?

Philosophy postgraduates are delicate. But brilliant. Brilliant in their delicacy! In their half-derangement. We’re simply hoping they survive to the end of the their scholarships. My God! We’ve brought them this far – we don’t want to lose them now.

Scholarship philosophy students, doing nothing but study all day. Study and think about study. Study and prevaricate about study. We wish they’d balance their studies with some other activity. Like canoeing, or whatever. But you can’t force them.

It’s all or nothing for our philosophy PhD students (as it is for us.) They’ve waited their whole life for this, for time – time to study (just like us.) Our students are spears flung through the philosophical night. They’re soaring! In a great arc! They’re near the height of their flight!

And all they just want to experience that … rushing. That being thrown. That plunging. Blind-eyed. (Just like us.)

They want to be lost. To continue to lose themselves. Not to wake up from their PhD scholarship dream. Not to be reminded of the world.

They wanted to escape the world. They wanted an alibi. They wanted to be out of it all for a few years. They wanted to dream, philosophically.

They’re not suited to social chit chat. To an Organisational Management party. Neither are we, for God’s sake! Look at us! We’re not small talkers! We’re burners down. We’re destroyers. We’re apocalypticists. We’re end-of-the-world-ists.

And our PhD students are like us, but in nuce … We know who they are … They’re us, us ten years ago, us in nuce, us as infants, and we want to protect them … we want to enfold them with our wings. We want to incubate them, to hold them close.

Our younger selves. Younger versions of who we are. Not yet compromised. Not yet all loss-of-innocence. Not yet fully disappointed. Not yet crashed up against the reality-principle. Against the so-called real world. They haven’t understood it yet, what the real world is, and nor do they need to.

Can’t we just leave them alone for a bit? Let them be, in their innocence. In their ardency?

Look at them: they’re practically burning up. They’re running temperatures – high temperatures. They’re febrile – but this is their normal state. This is who they are.

They’re wild-eyed. They can barely string a sentence together at the best of times. But tonight … They’re inarticulate. They’re stammering.

Don’t scare them, organisational managers. Don’t make them bolt. Don’t approach them. Don’t talk to them. Don’t even ask them what they’re working on. Don’t even show polite interest. It might tip them over the edge.

They’re rare flowers, organisational managers. Orchids. Who need very special conditions. Very careful nurturing. They’re … easily bruised. Tender. Half deranged no doubt.

To hurt them is to hurt us. To endanger them. Be tender.

These are terrible times. Technocratic times, organisational managers. And we try to shelter them from that. From the full realisation. From the great Futility. No, they mustn’t know yet. They mustn’t feel it. Allow them some time. Give them some slack. Let them wander.

They don’t kneed to know it all, not yet. The big picture. The vast dreadful picture. The great takeover. Insulate them from that. Keep them safe. Shelter them. In our wings. Because we know what it was like – that realisation.

We remember when we Saw, really Saw, for the first time, organisational managers. We remember when we woke up. Let it be gentler for them. Let it not all come upon them all at once. Let them not be struck by lightning. It’s cruel. It’s needless.

We can’t do that to them – can’t expose them. No, let it come to them gradually, over time. Let it seep into them, the Knowledge. Let it come, drop by drop slowly, not all at once.

There’s no need for them to Know, not yet, organisational managers. Keep them protected. Let them work in peace. Let them burrow through the days and nights in peace. Let them read in peace.

Let them think the sky above their heads is the real sky. That the PhD night is the real night. They’re not ready for the full Futility. For the full Oblivion.

How can we explain to the Organisational Managers? How can we make them understand? It’s a differend. It’s a different language. It’s a cultural divide. How can we make them understand?

We are not like you. Nor are they. We might appear to be calm, sane. But we’re only just holding ourselves together. We’ve put our human suits on, for the occasion. We’re acting normal. We’re masking.

Don’t you understand what this costs us? Simply to speak normally To pretend to be one of you. The violence you do us. The cruelty. What we’ve been reduced to! What our PhD students still are not! Which is why we love them! Treasure them!

We’re treasuring ourselves. Rocking ourselves in our own arms. Singing lullabies to ourselves. We’re singing to ourselves, too. To the vulnerable ones we were! To the fragile youths we were! Who’d come back to uni from the streets. Who’d returned, on scholarships.

Do not think you know us – understand us, organisational managers. Do not think we share a common language. Do not think you can learn to speak like us.

That there’s an asymmetry between us. An infinite dissymmetry. We come from the other. From the outside. We bring the outside with us. That it enfolds us, like a cloak.

We don’t occupy the same universe, organisational managers. It’s not the same for you and us. It’s not the same planet we occupy. It’s not the same sky above our heads. It’s not the same firmament. They’re not the same skies. This is not the same universe.

We’re our own place. We come from very far away. We’ve travelled all the distance of the sky. We’re tired! We’re broken! We’ve crawled here on our knees! We’ve known such … extremity … such alienation.

This Is not our world, as it is yours, organisational managers. It’s never been our world. Nothing in it is ours. We’re not of this accursed planet. We’re not of this so called reality.

We are not like you, and they – our postgraduate students – even more so. We aren’t of your kind, and they – our PhD students – are even farther out. You cannot understand us; we’re unknown to you, and they – our PhD students – impossible so.

They’re beyond you – and even beyond us. Even further out than us. We don’t understand them. They’re a mystery to us. We can’t catch up with them. Their ardency is greater than ours.

They know their time is short. They know they won’t survive, not as they are. Your PhD students will get something somewhere, but ours? This is their moment. This is their time. Their studying time.

Do you think they’ll be able to study out there? After they’ve finished (if they finish)? Do you think the conditions will be right for them to read, to write?

With your party, organisational managers, you’re robbing them of study time, from reading time, from writing time. And they have precious little left of that.

You brought them to an Organisational Management party – what horror. You summoned them to an Organisational Management get-together. You wanted them to mingle with Organisational Management PhDs. My God!

Do you think they’ll have anything in common with our PhDs? Do you think they’ll understand our PhDs? They are our hope. They are what’s highest and best in us. They’re our integrity. They’re what we are. They’re our hearts! They’re our souls!

Who are we, compared to them? We’re compromisers. We’re fallers short …

The Organisational Management takeover – nearly complete. Nearly over. Total infiltration: that’s how its worked. That’s how its done it.

Organisational Management is a logic, more than anything. It’s a way of doing things. In fact, every discipline is Organisational Management, if it’s done properly.

 

The bright light of Organisational Management, shining into every corner. Illuminating – every crack. Eliminating all the shadows.

 

Organisational Management is the future of study. The future of learning – lifelong learning.

We won’t need unis. We’ll carry an internal uni. We’ll be able to download Organisational Management into our souls – into the hollow space where our souls once were. We’ll take Organisational Management in a pill, or something. They’ll be able to inject it, Organisational Management.

 

Organisational Management is a style of thinking. It’s total – encompassing. Encompasses all.

Don’t think of it as a subject so much as a way of thinking. As a technique of thinking. As the technicality of thinking, reached as such.

Organisational Management is thought become technique – total technique.

I love Organisational Management, that’s we need to learn to say. I accept Organisational Management, and everything it is.

We don’t want to be yesterday’s people. We don’t want to hang onto the past, the philosophical past. We don’t want to exclude ourselves from the cultural conversation. We don’t want to be obstinate, stiff-necked.

We should accept our role. Teach applied Organisational Management ethics. Help guide Organisational Management through the ethical wilderness. Organisational Management needs ethical help. An ethical supplement!

Organisational Management needs assistance in weighing up ethical questions! Questions thrown up through the systematic application of Organisational Management! From internal contradictions within Organisational Management.

And that’s how philosophy can have a role in the continued expansion of Organisational Management! That’s how philosophy can play its role.

 

The growth of Organisational Management doesn’t have to be at the expense of Philosophy. Philosophy can grow right alongside Organisational Management. With Organisational Management.

And the same for all the other humanities subjects. History can be the history of gradual Organisational Management. Geography can be about the uneven application of Organisational Management. Politics can be about the technocratic application of Organisational Management. The arts, in general, can be about the décor of Organisational Management: of its glass and steel foyers. About the public spaces of its new campuses.  

 

Organisational Management has a place for us. They’ve made a place. They’re adaptable like that. There’s a role for philosophy after all. There’s something we’re for.

The ethical adjustment of the Organisational Management programme: that’s what we’re to provide. The ethical validation of the Organisational Management project: that’s what it really means. The ethical rubber-stamping of the Organisational Management programme: that’s our purpose.

And never the question of the ethicity of ethics. Never the question of the values that it would uphold.

We didn’t know the name, Organisational Management until now. It didn’t call itself that. Business Studies – that was the old name … An inaccurate name …

But now, Organisational Management is naming itself as such. It’s coming out into the open as exactly what it is. It doesn’t need to disguise itself any longer.

It can be brazen – quite open. It can walk in daylight. It can be abroad. There it is, unabashed, unashamed, nothing other than what it is.

Organisational Management – not even business studies. It’s not even called business studies. It doesn’t need that alibi. It is what it is.

 

Organisational Management, opening its eyes. Taking its first steps. It’s even cute, in its way. All these baby Organisational Managers, with their new subject area. Wondering what it is they’re doing.

Organisational Management! There’s an innocence to it. a newness. It used to be called Business Studies, but now …

Organisational Management! It’s as one with the new university buildings. With the steel and glass.

And it’s not even a New University subject anymore. It’s moved into the old universities. Into the traditional universities.

Soon, everyone will be studying Organisational Management … Nothing but Organisational Management. In the beginning, there was philosophy, and all the other disciplines split off from philosophy. In the end, there will be only Organisational Management, as all the other disciplines have been subsumed by Organisational Management.

 

Organisational Management. The all-subject. The ur-subject. All unis are Organisational Management unis, nothing else. They’re simply about organisation! And management!

Organisational Management, the newest subject area, meets philosophy, the oldest subject area. Organisational Management, which has no lofty history, which comes from nowhere, meets philosophy, which is all lofty history, and which comes from the great centres of civilization! Which was born in ancient India, ancient China, ancient Greece!

Organisational Management, the etymology of which isn’t really very interesting, meets Philosophy, the etymology of which means a friendship with wisdom, the friendly desire for wisdom.

 

The Organisational Management maw! Swallowing everything! Innocently! Thinking nothing of it! Barely aware of its enormous power!

Organisational Management! Almost faculty-sized. Scooping up everything. Swallowing the humanities, in one gulp …

Organisational Management! And what’s philosophy to its vast bulk? A bit of plankton to a whale. A bit of krill …

Organisational Management’s not so much a subject area, as a way of doing things. Organisational Management, integrating itself into every discipline. A new philosophical movement – that’s how we have to see it.

Organisational Management’s not a body of knowledge, but a way things are done. A practice. A methodology, if you like. A way of approaching problems.

Even philosophy could benefit. If we could just be a little more organisational, a little more managerial. Don’t we see? It’s about a logic. A practice. It’s a mindset, more than anything …

 

The Organisational Management revolution! The Organisational Management paradigm shift!

It’s results-oriented! Outcomes-focused! There’s to be no more imprecision!

It’s about efficiency, really. In a time where resource allocation needs to be optimised. When we’re more aware than ever that there’s not infinite amounts of money.

We need to identify strategies that work. It’s a bit like CBT, except for the world.

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. The lines in which they colour.

They want something else. They want the pure fire heaven. Some directed energy weapon from the sky. They want lightning to strike above them. And that’s who are we are, to them. That’s what we bring.

 

The philosophical supplement. The philosophical phantom limb. 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? Both. Neither.

A becoming-organisational-management of philosophy. A becoming-philosophy-of-organisational-management. A double becoming.

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.

But it was a crypto-philosophy department. A hidden philosophy department. A philosophy department that dare not speak its name.

 

The last philosophy department, in its way. A posthumous philosophy department. A philosophy department after the death of the original philosophy department. That no one expected to rise from its grave. To come back into appearance.

Even the other heads of department had a respect for Cicero. Her chutzpah. Her canniness. They admired her politicking, which they, for the most part, couldn’t be bothered to do. They were impressed that, at the end of her career, she could be bothered to do this. That she had the motivation.

And of course Cicero had the credentials. She had the CV. She was respected. Looked up to. She’d brought in millions in research money. She’d had a distinguished research career. She’d partnered with some of the best universities in the US. And she wasn’t just going to cruise to retirement. She wasn’t going to see out her last years doing the same old thing.

Cicero had a plan: the other heads of department had an intimation of that. Cicero horizon-scanned. She could see it coming at a civilisational level: the new control system. She knew it was nigh, the new control grid. She knew she needed philosophy to understand what was really going on.