Work in Progress

Look, Cicero wanted to sabotage philosophy at the uni. She actually had an education. She actually knew things. They made her head of department. They actually gave philosophy a future. So she brought to her people who had none of these things. Just to let them fuck it up.

 

And the final move: was the organisational management move. The organisational management completion. Which Cicero foresaw in some way. Which she wanted.

It was the completion of the farce. The consummation of the nonsense. Which she unleashed in the first place! Which she set in motion!

 

Cicero, as destroyer. Cicero, as murderer. Cicero, as strangler. Cicero as impresario of disaster.

 

Maybe this is only the elaborate form of her suicide. This is the playing out of her, like, autodestruction.

 

The whole thing was staged, I reckon. She saw it all. She knew what was coming. It’s playing out just as she knew it would.

 

She knew the deepest truth. What philosophy is in this world. The only thing philosophy can be in this world. A farce – a total farce.

 

This is what she wanted. This was the long plan. This was her strategic plan.

The complete humiliation – of philosophy. By agreeing to its move to organisational management. The complete destruction – of philosophy.

Was it supposed to be some kind of dialectics? By bringing the worst, did she hope to bring the best?

 

Cicero as puppetmaster. Cicero as ringleader. Forget her helpless looks. Forget her alleged despair. The organisational management move is what she wanted.

And she’s made you – you – her successor. She’s made you head of department. That’s what’s really done it.

 

She can be so interested in you, so interested. She can turn to you, look at you, and make you feel like you’re the only person in the world. That she and she alone understands you. That she’s intuited just exactly who you are.

And then … she’ll turn away.

 

She tears strips from you. Leaves you raw.

She opens wounds that only she can heal.

 

She’ll appear to see right into you – your heart. She notices you. You get her unwavering attention.

 

She’ll seduce you – if you’re young and pretty. She’ll make you do things. It’s like hypnotism. And yet she sometimes give the sense of being so helpless. Needy even – and that only you can help her. How does she do that?

 

There’s something diabolical about her. Scheming. Devilish. Mephisotlean.

 

She’ll betray you. Sell you out. There’s a dreadful exhibitionism when she’s at her worst. A grandeur. A theatricality. But that was before her breakdown.

What breakdown? That’s just part of the theatre.

Wow. Wheels within wheels, right?

 

She’s retired, basically.

Why – she not very old.

I heard it was because she seduced some student. I heard it was because she made one kill herself.

 

She’s a powerful woman. A monster. Or she can be. But she can great charm. Of course she can. She’s all these things.

 

The move to organisation management is part of the end times. Part of the final humiliation.

 

It’s a kind of apostasy. Cicero signed us up for this. Why? Why? It’s a sublime act. Shrouded in mystery. It follows an apocalyptic logic. Understand this, and you’ll understand everything.

 

But I still want to believe in Cicero. Of course we do. Haven’t we looked up to her, all along?

She brought us here. She gathered us together. But why – just to wreck us? Just to destroy us? So perverse …

She knew what she was doing. It was deliberate destruction.

 

It’s our role to decode what’s happened. To unravel it. How are we going to do that?

We have to understand the logic. She’s set us a puzzle. Solve this, and we solve everything. We’ll understand our place in all things. Our role in it all. What we can do. How we can carry things forward …

 

We see it now. It’s clear to us. Cicero wanted to found a philosophical dept 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.

And we’re glad we know. Now it makes sense. 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. Our role is to be laughable. To play our role in the parody. A farcical role.

 

We have a role. A farcical role, it’s true – but a role. A farcical role in a farcical time. And we’re perfect for it.

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. In organisational management – where else?

 

And Cicero has had to remove herself. She had to take extended leave or retire or whatever. In order to put us centre stage. And let you, X, become the new head of department. A parody head. A headless head. It’s beautiful. What could be more beautiful?

 

She set nihilism to work. Brilliant! A brilliant woman! It’s like performance art, or something.

 

And who are we, but puppets? Happy puppets – happy to have a job, any job. Glad to work somewhere, at least.

Our idiocy’s the point – we know that. Our mediocrity. We were never supposed to be anything other than idiotic. That’s what we’re here for. We have a role. And shouldn’t we be happy with that?

 

How to read Cicero’s silence? How to interpret it?

And yet the sense that her silence is the most important thing of all. That everything is to be read there. If we were to focus on it, concentrate on it, then all the secrets would be revealed. We’d understand who we were. That’s it, isn’t it?

 

Cicero knows who we are. What we’re for. Cicero understands our role, this close to the end. And now so do we.

 

Our apocalyptic role. Our apocalyptic community. But an apocalyptic of parody (a parody of apocalyptic?)

 

Part of the End will be a parade of nonsense. Of deformities and mutations. Not physical, but mental. There’ll be sports. Twistings. Human contortionists. Like in that Hieronymous Bosch painting. Like some carnival of the end.

 

Cicero knew. More – Cicero made it happen. It was Cicero’s idea. That’s the terrible secret. And the wonderful secret. Now we Understand. Now we See. We know what our role’s supposed to be.

 

The Secret is revealed – and what a Secret.

Cicero’s a show-woman. An impresario. She was the orchestrator, all along.

It’s a brilliant Entertainment, but for who? For God, maybe.

The whole thing, like some a court masque. The whole university was her stage. And no one understood but her. And now us …

 

And now she’s lapsed into catatonia. And alcoholism. Is that part of it, too? Did she anticipate that, in her strategic plan?

 

Is she merely pretending to have become alcoholic? Is it a deliberate ruse?

 

What’s she doing? Who’s she hiding from? Hasn’t X long suspect that she was some kind of MI5 agent. That she was some kind of spook?

 

It’s like in The Spy who Came in From the Cold. It’s deliberate. It’s a strategy. She’s just pretending to have gone awry. To have become alcoholic. It’s a ruse. It’s a disguise.

 

She’s not actually drunk. She’s actually sober. She’s gone beyond drunkenness. Into some strange new state. It’s a kind of sobriety – but a divine sobriety.

 

Hasn’t Cicero always presented herself a philosophical heretic? As a phenomenological heretic. As a critical theoretical heretic. As a poststructural heretic. Even as Gnostic – although, as she concedes, Gnosticism never actually existed.

 

Is this Cicero’s idea of a joke? A perfect joke. A total inversion. The punchline: you’ve become head of philosophy at a Russell Group university. You’re in charge.

We’re Cicero’s army. Cicero’s ragtag. Cicero’s band of … what?

We’re Cicero’s philosophers. We’re the people of Cicero.

Even though Cicero seems kinda brain-damaged. Even though Cicero’s not what she was …

 

Didn’t Cicero once say she was going to invent a new god? A new mythology? Didn’t she confide her theogonic ambitions to us? Her desire to consecrate and enact a new myth? Wasn’t it about engaging the Ungrund? About seething energies? About a blind, increate formlessness?

 

Didn’t Cicero once talk of the Urgrund? The Unground? The origin of all gods, and where gods are dissolved? Mythology’s all about god slaying and god making, isn’t that what she’s said?

 

That was what Cicero dreamt up when she as in the deepest and longest of academic meetings. When she was practically buried in academic meetings. When she nearly lost her mind in academic meetings.

 

A deeper crucifixion than the crucifixion. Beyond Jesus …

 

Didn’t Cicero speak of a headless deity without reason, without consciousness? Didn’t she speak of the decapitated Medusa, of Dionysus torn apart? Didn’t she speak of the exiled Typhon? Of the fallen Lucifer?

 

The sacrificial escalation of death: wasn’t that what Cicero was all about. Seen it in its horror and magnificence. Without hope of salvation, redemption or transcendence …

 

Cicero, starting some weird philosophy cult. Cicero and her cadre of very intense philosophy MA students. What’s she doing to them? Where is it heading? Inevitably to suicide. Inevitably to death. Of course! Cicero’s death-mad. Death-fascinated.

 

Cicero’s cadre.

MA students are impressionable. They were flattered. They liked the attention. Of course they did! They wanted to be part of something. Who wouldn’t? Cicero’s enthusiasm was contagious. Cicero was exciting, back then. Cicero was wild …

And when Cicero was in her cups. When Cicero went extreme. When Cicero was in the grip of an enthusiasm … What could they do but follow her?

 

Cicero was a rollercoaster, back then. She was up and down.

She spoke with her eyes closed, like an ecstatic. She spoke from the mysterium. Delivering secrets. Secrets of the end.

 

Cicero, founding an apocalyptic cult. A Gnostic cult.

 

Cicero’s a woman for the moment – the apocalyptic moment. When everything comes to a head. But she’s also a woman for the endless – for the never-beginning and the never-ending.

 

Cicero’s lectures to the postgraduates. And you know what postgraduates are like. How impressionable they are. How thought can infect them like a contagion. How they rise and fall with their lecturer’s enthusiasms.

And these Newcastle postgraduates … They’re fresh, raw. They haven’t seen it all before. They aren’t jaded.

Didn’t we know the dangers of putting Cicero in front of such a class? That cults would form …

A woman who sees things the way Cicero does. Who’s as unstable as Cicero. As half mad. As possessed by … what? The truth? The end?

 

Haven’t we, too, been caught up by Cicero’s enthusiasms? Haven’t we, too, found ourselves half mad, like her, madly drunk, like her. Reading this or that wild text. Forgotten texts.

Reading philosophy as prophecy. Reading apocalyptic theology. Reading the Gnostics, and Gnostic-influenced philosophers.

Hasn’t it seemed to us that Cicero had the Knowledge. The gnosis. The great Secret of all things? Hasn’t it seemed that way, whether or not Cicero had the Knowledge. Whether or not she possessed the gnosis.

 

Cicero’s threats to leave it all. The exodus. To make her departure. To live a simple life at the coast, she said. But how will she afford it?

Rumours of an inheritance. Rumours of a lottery win.

 

Fears that this will just be the path of Cicero’s destruction. Of Cicero’s ruin.

 

Philosophy’s the path Cicero’s chosen for her destruction. Who’s ever been in doubt of that?

 

That she doesn’t doubt herself, as we doubt ourselves. That she’s free of self-questioning, as we are never free of self-questioning. That she doesn’t second guess herself, as we always second guess ourselves. That she has no very British fear of pretension, as we are always fearful of being pretentious. That she is unapologetic about her belonging to the traditions of old Europe, as we can never take ourselves seriously as heirs and heriesses of the tradition of old Europe.

 

Rumours that Cicero is burnt out. That she flew too close to the philosophical sun. Rumours that Cicero’s a shell of herself. That she’s not the woman she was.

 

Didn’t Cicero talked of freedom hubs, of water culture, of hydroponics? Of getting off the grid? Of growing her own?

Didn’t Cicero buy up tins and tins of mackerel? Tomatoes? Whole sacks of pinto beans?

 

Cicero’s ready. She lives in constant preparation, constant readiness.

She’s vigilant. She’s watching. She’s keeping an eye out. A weather eye …

 

Who knows what’s happening inside Cicero’s head. Inside Cicero’s breast. Who knows about Cicero’s spiritual convulsions? About Cicero’s spiritual disturbance? About Cicero’s spiritual depths?

 

Who knows what’s happening in Cicero’s heart? Who knows what Cicero does all day?

 

We’re not qualified to understand her. We’d have to have the spiritual depths ourselves to understand her spiritual depths. And we don’t. We couldn’t do.

 

Cicero recruited us. Cicero plucked us from our provincial universities. Cicero summoned us here. Cicero scouted the conferences for the up and coming – and the right kind of up and coming: the desperate. The spiritually intense. The put upon. The cornered.

Cicero sought us out: the prospectless. The defeated – spiritually. The lower class. The bordering on resentful. The embittered. The skint. The all but down and out. Who’d never normally be given a lectureship at a Russell Group university.

We were the desperate – which she knew. Because she thought she could shape something from our desperation. Were the bitter – she knew that, too. Because she thought she could make something of our bitterness.

 

We are Cicero’s people. What’s she done to us? What has she made us into? Are we mad, like her? Have we been turned mad by her?

 

Did she see us as we were? Did she see herself in us? As junior version of her?

Did she take herself to be founding a philosophical school? Did she want to leave a legacy? Did she want to make sure there’d be others like her in the academy?

 

Did she see signs of brilliance in us? Might we be brilliant after all? Brilliant in our stupidity. Brilliant in our mediocrity.

 

Perhaps we’re brilliant inside. Very deeply inside. So deeply we don’t know about it. So deeply we show no signs of it, and never will.

 

Cicero’s faith in us – is it entirely misplaced? Is she entirely deluded? Why did she recruit us – us? Why did she bring us to her adopted city?

She was already a philosopher gone rogue. A theologian gone dark. Did she want fellow rogues? Was that what she was looking for?

 

What was Cicero looking for?

Did she think she might bring us on? That we had potential. Potential!? God knows!

Have we disappointed her? Are we disappointing her now?

 

What plans she must have had for the dept. What hopes she must have had. Her teaching. Her research.

 

Did she see the future in us? Did she place her faith in us? In us!? Surely not. Wouldn’t that be a terrible judgement upon her.

Was it a blindspot in her sight? Had she just got us wrong? Or is she right about us, too? Does she something in us that we don’t see? Some … knowledge. Some capacity for gnosis.

That, if it were trained. If we followed her example. If we were brought on in the right way. If we engaged in a process of spiritual discipleship …

 

Has Cicero been teaching us all along, in her own way. Indirectly. Discreetly.

Has she been showing us a path? Shaping us?

 

She lifted us up. She brought us here. She made this possible – for us. For our kind.

Cicero’s undergone a phase change. She’s passed on to another level of life. She’s become … well, you’ll see.

 

Cicero’s paranoid. She believes she’s being watched. She believes everyone is being watched. And monitored. And surveilled.

 

Cicero’s gone further than we have.

 

Cicero’s beyond the uni now. Beyond philosophy, even.

 

Cicero’s virtually mute now. Since her renunciation. She hasn’t spoken for a while.

 

Cicero, opening dry lips. Looking at us from the depths of her sadness.

 

Did Cicero always know the way the uni was going? Hadn’t she predicted every move in advance? What’s her verdict? What’s the plan?

 

Cicero knows where it’s all heading.

 

Cicero, our leader in exile. Cicero, who closes her eyes when she speaks.

 

Cicero is persona non grata in the corridors of the uni. Cicero went entirely too far for the good people of the uni. They practically drove her out! Demanded her resignation!  They gave her extended leave instead. What does extended leave mean?

 

There are people who call Cicero far right. Who call her Nazi. Who call her a mad conspiracy theorist. Of course they do! Haven’t we all become far right? Haven’t we all become mad conspiracy theorists!

Cicero’s a dangerous thinker, that’s the thing. She makes thinking dangerous.

 

Cicero poisoned youth, they said. She was corrupting youth.

 

Cicero was always trying to turn the students away of the classroom. Send them into the streets. What about insurance! The university said. What about safety!

 

Cicero’s legendary pedagogy. Cicero’s educational anarchy. Cicero’s attempt to deprogramme the students. To deprocess them.

Cicero tried to produce independent thinkers. They never forgave her.

 

Cicero’s sabbatical. Her thinking time. Her research leave. She needs it! To cool off her head.

 

It’s an emergency! A uni state of emergency! Can they really take this kind of decision without consulting anyone? Do they have this kind of power? Can they really do whatever they want? Does the framework exist? Yes they can.

 

We need to resist – not legally. Not through the union. We can’t challenge the uni. No: philosophically. We need to stage a philosophical battle. And not just against our uni. Against all tyranny. We need to start a philosophical movement.

Well, Cicero – what would you advise?

 

This is an historic day! This is how our names will go down in history – well, philosophical history.

Laughter.

 

It’s what we needed all along: an enemy. Schmitt was right with his friend / enemy distinction. It’s very defining.

It’ll make us into something. We won’t be idiot lecturers, doing this and then that.

We have something to sharpen our thought-weapons against.

 

We have to understand what kind of battle this is. Its true dimensions. Its scope. Its spiritual angle. Its religious one. We won’t just dissipate our energies, not anymore.

 

We have to Prepare. Draw on all the resources of philosophy. And probably non philosophy. And anti philosophy. Summon all our forces.

 

Are we philosophers – real philosophers? Is that what we do? Maybe we’re something else? Anti philosophers, say.

Antiphilosophers? Haven’t the French already done that?

The French have done everything, those bastards.

 

A native philosophy – all of our own: that’s what we need. A British philosophy, God help us. Our version of European thought. What better?

We’ll make it our own. We won’t be playing catch-up anymore. This’ll be our thing. Our mission. We’ll follow our trajectory. This will be the making of us – as thinkers. As philosophers, or antiphilosophers, or nonphilosophers, or whatever.

 

No more inferiority complex. No more imposter’s syndrome. No sense of having arrived too late. No belatedness. No posthumousness. We’ll weaponize thought – all thought. Everything we’ve been trained in, however poorly.

 

A local struggle – a specific struggle. Yes! Yes!

All along, we needed a mission. A Cause. And now we have it: our Cause. This is what we’re going to do. This is how we’ll busy ourselves. That will magnetise our writings. Draw them together.

 

Now we have something to Do. Now we have something to busy ourselves with …

We’ll remake philosophy. Reshape it. We’ll draw on the powers of Europe.

 

Cicero’s experiments in distantiation. In dissociation. They’re quite deliberate. There are psychological states we can reach out here, at the coast. Philosophical states.

There can no more philosophy. No one can believe in philosophy. Just like no one can believe in God.

Call it a negative philosophy, then – like negative theology. Where it’s apophatic. Where it’s all about what it’s not.

Call it anti-philosophy.

*How can you be anti-philosophy? Philosophy’s, like, everything. Not to do philosophy is still to do philosophy – that’s the philosophical trap.

It’s all a trap.

 

Anti-philosophy. Someone French is bound to have thought of it in, like, 1912. They’re so far ahead.

Look it up.

Fuck, there’s loads of stuff on anti-philosophy. It was all the rage in France in the ‘70s.

Typical.

There’s some guy who gave up philosophy for … sailing. He’s written a whole treatise on it. sailing and antiphilosophy.

Wow.

We’re always too late. 

What about non-philosophy, then?

That’s taken – come on. There’s a whole school of non-philosophy. Don’t you know that?

What about hyperphilosophy?

That’s not bad …

How about ultraphilosophy. Surphilosophy … like surrealism. Where Sur means beyond.

People would be expecting things from us. Like, great things. We need to lower their expectations. They need to understand that this is philosophy in parody. Philosophy as a joke. Like a failure philosophy. A fuck up philosophy. A fuck ups philosophy. A philosophy for the fucked up. Philosophy that isn’t philosophy. That’s not quite philosophy. Not even anything.

Not even philosophy: that’s a name.

Do you think?

Not even philosophy … look that up.

 

Imagining it. A whole not-even-philosophy movement.

Would it mean we have do things? Like, work at anything? Run a not-even philosophy journal? A society? Hold conferences. Run some not even philosophy series for a publisher?

Fuck that. You shouldn’t have to do stuff if you’re not-even-philosophers. It should be like, slacker philosophy. Where it’s not about arguments, or theses, or positions, or being for or against anything.

What about ontology?

Not even that.

Metaphysics?

Not even that.

Ethics?

Not even that. Not even anything. Not even philosophy.

Just being lazy useless bastards, then.

It’s more like some suspension of philosophy: that’s how I  think of it. Where we lay down the usual philosophical tools.

Where we get drunk together, in other words.

No, not even that.

Where we hang out.

Not even that.

Where we don’t organise anything. Just sit on the fucking beach.

Maybe.

Would we become the latest thing? Would word spread through the more alert postgraduates? Through the more vibrant postdocs? For MA students looking for something really transgressive?

Would blurred photos of us circulate on the net?

 

We should start some new philosophical movement. Like, coast philosophy. Philosophy of beaches and off shore breezes and morning fog. Philosophy that’s never quite in focus.

But it’s not really philosophy then, is it?

Exactly – it’s not yet philosophy. Not even philosophy.

So it’s philosophy-lite?

Maybe. But with all the pathos. With, like, heavy pathos. With self-loathing. With self-castigation. With the cleverest variations on self-destruction. With a special emphasis on picking the scabs. On digging the wounds a little deeper. On hating ourselves and each other. Quite systematically.

Brilliant idea. Where will it lead?

Nowhere. But joyfully nowhere. Because it’s not even philosophy.

 

Not even philosophy’s like the opposite of applied philosophy. Of useful philosophy. Of philosophy that wears the muzzle. Of underlabourer philosophy. That makes itself subservient.

 

A philosophy of disgust. At doing philosophy. At pretending to do philosophy. Or anything. Of pretending to be philosophers. Or being anything.

Because we’re against being. Against existing …

 

We’re just enjoying self-hatred. And the hatred of everything. In some vague apocalypticism. Some millennialism, without religion. Throwing all these big words about, idly. And smoking. And not being fucking productive.

 

Living in the great lull. Between the knowledge that the disaster’s coming and the disaster not yet being here. Between the sea going out, the open beach, and the incoming tsunami.

We’re in the time of the end, knowing that there’s nothing we can do about the end. Like, we can’t philosophise about it.

 

What has not even philosophy to do with the void? The void is the real object of thought. The void is what’s there when you’re not looking for it. It’s what you see from the corner of your eye.  When you’re idle. When you’re distracted. When you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be. When you’re just woolgathering. Gazing out the window, or whatever.

The void … it’s what there is instead of an object to think. Something serious to focus on. The void is what appears when reality’s, like, thinning out. Here at the coast, for example. Where it’s not even a city.

 

The ‘not even’ is a beautiful category … did we come up with it by ourselves. Look it up … see if some French type had the idea …

Georges Bataille said he was not even a communist.

That bastard … so he was on to it … But no one’s developed it since then. Good – that’s something.

 

Look at us. We’re a disgrace. Because we don’t know what to do, now we’ve got our jobs. We don’t know what to do with them. We have enough integrity not to try to be careerist. No – scratch that. It’s not a question of integrity. It’s … can’t be botheredness. It’s … lack of capacity.

We could do it if we tried.

Bataille would approve.

Would he? I don’t we fuck enough for him to approve. We don’t hang out at brothels. Have you ever been to a brothel?

 

We should write a manifesto. What would it say? The Centre for Not Even Philosophy – do you think the uni would allow that?

You can be our president, X. You’re in charge of spreading our doctrine. Like syphilis.

 

This is our act of rebellion. Fuck it, it’s not even rebellion. It’s lazing about. It’s frolicking. Its whatever we fucking want it to be, sounds like.

What will they take from us? Our non-productivity. Our idleness. Our worklessness. Our empty time. Our staring out of windows time. Our wandering nowhere time. Our being suspended time. Our dissipation time.

 

To shut down our consciousness. Our awareness. And our self-consciousness. And our self-awareness.

 

How hard it is to be human. How hard, still, to be human. And we’re the last humans left, pretty much.

 

We’ve been too alert for too long. We need rest. We need to stop the engine. Stop the wheels turning.

 

Is there something wrong with us, or something right with us? Have we taken a wrong turn, or a right one? Is this a cul-de-sac or an opening?

Where have we lead ourselves? By instinct. By cussedness. By stupidity. By antinomalism. By sheer, blind luck.

 

We hold our gaze on the future. We know what’s coming. Prophets, of a sort. Heralds, of a sort. Apocalypticists.

 

Dread … is that what we feel? It’s deeper than that. Ur-dread. World-dread. Deeper-than-the-world dread. Existence dread.

Dread: that word. That heavy word. Dread: is that what we feel? Is it heavier than we are? Are we crushed by dread?

 

We’re specialists in this. In feeling these things. This is what we do. We’re made for spiritual environments that would crush anyone else. We’re made for spiritual climates that no one else could endure. We read the darkest books. We entertain the nightmarish thoughts. We’re used to nihilism. To Gnosticism.

 

We speak fluent apocalypse. We’re acclimatised. Accustomed. Like people who live at high altitude. We’re used to the abyss. Used to the pits.

 

We’re happiest in philosophies of the abyss. Of the greater darkness.

Among inhuman philosophies. Anti-philosophies. Ugly philosophies, from which you want to turn away.

We live in extremity. In mental extremity. In psychic extremity. We endure these … states. Like some kind of training. Like some mad, dark asceticism.

 

We know black waves will break. We know the black tide is coming in. We know black skies are coming. We’re ready.

They’re coming for us. For our kind. The new secret police – the new alphabet agencies.

Why would they bother with us? Haven’t they got other things to bother with?

It’s an algorithm. They’re tireless. All the lampposts out there, listening out for conversation about forbidden things. Searching for suspect words and phrases. Listening out for potential enemies of the state. Trying to prevent future crimes. Future criminals. Trying to prevent forbidden talk.

Everything we’re saying. Everything we’re doing – logged, tracked, analysed. We’re being tracked. Scored …

What do you think our social credit scores are? Do you think we’re doing well?

Laughter.

Come on, what can the algorithms do with talk about anti-philosophy and suicide? Not very much, I would suggest. I don’t think AI will be bothering with us.

 

We should just let ourselves be poisoned. Just give up. What do you suppose is in this beer? Are you going to stop drinking beer?

The poison’s everywhere. We know that. It falls in the rain. It blows in the air. It’s in our food. The water we drink.

Don’t pretend we can escape this. Don’t act as though we’re exempt.

 

They’re monitoring our electro-magnetic fields. They know all about that stuff. Our electro-magnetic auras. It’s a wavelength battle. It’s a spiritual battle. A very subtle form of warfare.

They’re microwaving us. We know that. They’re frying us. Our thoughts are microwaved thoughts. Our thoughts are fried thoughts.

 

Are we allowed to think these thoughts? Are we allowed to say these things? Is this, like, a smart pub? Is this smart beer? Surveillance beer? It might be. Are those surveillance beer mats? Are our pint glasses covered in sensors? What isn’t covered in sensors?

Are there microscopic drones, like, swarming around? What thought crimes have we committed today? God. Philosophy’s a thought-crime.

Fuck that. Philosophy’s complicit. Academic philosophy, anyway.

That’s why we need anti-philosophy, right?

Anti-philosophy … isn’t that just more philosophy? We don’t want any more philosophy.

 

The earth is poisoned. The very earth. The soil. The rocks. Probably. The mantle …

Can you poison the mantle?

All the way down to the earth’s core: poisoned. And all the way up, too. Through the atmosphere, the stratosphere. All the other -spheres. And space, too.

Can space be poisoned?

 

It’s all thick with poison. We’re all choked with poison. It’s amazing we‘re still alive.

Our tissues, thick with poison. Our lungs, thick with poison. Our livers, busily trying to process the poison.

We’re poisoned people. Poisoned thinkers. Poison slops through our veins. Poisons slide through our… mucus membranes. Poison’s being pumped through our lymph nodes.

The poison brews inside us. Slops around. In our bones, probably. In our ligaments. In our cartilage. There’s poison in our lips. Our earlobes. There’s poison in our retinas. We stare out of poison. There’s poison in our speech. In everything we say. There’s poison in our brains. These are the thoughts that poison thinks. It’s a wonder we’re still alive.

Are we still alive?

We’re just perpetuating the poison. We’re just poisoning more things. We’re spreading the poison. We can’t help it. What isn’t poisoned? What’s, like, the last unpoisoned thing?

The sun, maybe. The sun would just burn away poisons.

Do you think?

Have we poisoned all of space?

We’re trying, I’m sure. Have we poisoned all the wavelengths? What aren’t we killing?

There’s poison in everything we write. All our words and sentences. There’s poison in our thoughts. What would we be like if we hadn’t been poisoned?

Only the poisoned can think the poison. That’s what I think. Only the poisoned can write from the depths of the poison.

 

I think we should just let the poison run its course. Stop resisting. Just sink down. We should die this death. Just let ourselves die. Stop resisting.

And then what?

And then … who knows? And then be resurrected.

 

There’s stuff you can do something about, and stuff you can’t. You can’t escape the poison. You can’t escape anything. It’s just … fatalism.

Accept it: we’re being destroyed. And we can’t do anything about it. Babies poisoned in the womb. Children, growing up poisoned.

Why resist? Just give in. They’ve won, we’ve lost. A toast to them: well done, guys. Bravo, fuckers. The world’s yours. We won’t resist. We won’t do anything. We’ll just kill ourselves to get out of your way. We’ll slash our own throats. We’ll spare you the trouble.

We’re tired of resisting. We don’t want to put up a fight anymore. We’re tired of fighting. Just give us instructions. We’ll do as you say. Just say what you want, and we’ll do what we want.

You’ve won. Accept your victory and the spoils of victory. The world is yours. The earth, the poisoned earth is yours. The skies, the poisoned skies are yours. You’re fucking welcome.

 

What I want to say to them: surely you can’t want perpetual horror. Surely you can’t want utter destruction. Surely this is all supposed to lead somewhere. Surely it’s all about your utopia. Surely all this was a means, and there’s a goal ahead. Surely this is all for something. It isn’t, isn’t it?

Show us, then. Show us where it’s leading … What was it for, the great poisoning?

 

Carried along. Borne along. Living out our petty lives. Our so called lives. Living our half lives and quarter lives …

 

We should just strangle ourselves. Right away! Wouldn’t that resolve everything? And leave our poisoned corpses.

 

We don’t live and breathe as we’re supposed to. This is not a world in which we can live and breathe, not anymore. It’s not a world for us. It’s not a home. It affords no dwelling.

 

Corpses lie all around us. And we’re corpses, too. We’re walking corpses. Staggering corpses. We’re only alive in death, thick with death.

 

We can’t even be corpses. We can’t just lie there, all dead. There’s still a little life in us. We still stagger about. We still … live, if this is called living. If we can call this life. God. We have no choice in the matter, or any matter. We weren’t consulted. No one thought to ask us.

 

These are our new lives. Our new monitored lives. Our new tracked-and traced lives. Our new battery hen lives. Our new micro-surveilled lives. Our new watched-at-all-times lives. Our new listened-to-ceaselessly lives. The algorithm search engines checking our every sentence. Watching out for thought-crimes. Reading our thoughts … is that possible?

 

Come on, you’ve won, you’ve humiliated us. We’re humiliating ourselves. We’re doing it for you. We’re carrying out the devil’s work – your work. You sentenced us to death by humiliation. Very well, we’ll carry out the humiliation. We’ll do what you want. We barely need telling.

We humiliate ourselves – it’s a reflex. As though it were pre-programmed, and perhaps it is. Destroying ourselves is what you wanted. And the only honourable thing to do. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. But we always hold back from the final destruction. We never actually take our own lives We’re always playing chicken. Always feigning death. Feigning humiliating ourselves for the final time.

As if we expect to be saved. As if we thought something was going to save us. As if we thought things might change. Our sentence might be overlooked. That we could just get away with living a little longer. Taking a few more breaths. We thought we might be spared for a little while longer …

 

Shame … shame at being alive in this world … shame at living on in this world … shame at being human in this new phase of post-human life … Shame because we know what’s going on … we know what’s happening … there should be no excuse …

 

Our base, poisoned animality. Our sunken, poisoned bodies. Our filth … which doesn’t look like filth. Our abasement, which doesn’t look like abasement … our defiled humanity … We’re ready to die. We actually want to die … We’re perfect would-be martyrs … we’re still alive, and that’s their revenge.

 

What they’ve done with the world. The making-prison of the world.

At least we know it wasn’t always like this. That it wasn’t always a  prison. That we weren’t always confined. That this isn’t how it had to be.

 

They won the battle. And now they’re letting us live on, to see their victory. To live out our humiliation.

An invisible humiliation. An invisible martyrdom. That no one really understands. Because they don’t remember the old reality. They’ve adjusted fully to the new reality. They’re perfectly at home in the new world.

They’ve forgotten how things used to be. They don’t feel compromised. They’re pragmatic. They’re getting on with things. They’re living life as best they can. They’re making the best of it all.

Impressive in its way. Impressive really. Routinised killing. Everyday killing. Disguised as everything else killings. They’ve normalised mass death. They’ve made democide look like business as usual. And the whole world’s in denial.

 

Surely they couldn’t be bothered to kill us. Surely we’re no threat. Surely we’re not going to do anything. Make anything happen.

 

Our secret struggle. Our secret politics – our anti-politics. All the things we’re against … everything, really. The whole world. The world as such.

Can we be imprisoned for that?

They’re coming for us – of course they are. They’re readying the system.

They know what they’re doing. They’re feeding us narratives. They’re feeding us lies. They want us to react a certain way. And everyone reacts a certain way.

But not us.

Not us.

 

It’s clicking into place. It’s worldwide. They have their hands around our throats. Each of us.

It’s brilliant. So devious. So subtle. They’re using all their powers. Summoning all their demons. And we’re … defenceless.

 

We should try and prolong the last moment forever. Make it last … forever.

This is our time in the garden. Before they come for us. Before Completion. Before Hegemony. Before the ultimate Lockdown. The, like, forever Lockdown. 

And everyone’s oblivious, pretty much. No one knows what’s happening, pretty much. Except us. Except we few. And what kind of resistance are we?

 

Where is God? Will God help us? If only we could part of the clouds and see God. If only we could look upwards and see God. If only it was the rapture. If only we could be just lifted into the air. Into the sky. Lifted away from what’s coming. Lifted out of this hellworld.

 

This world’s becoming hell. It’s closing around us. It’s choking us – all of us – and we’re the only ones to feel it. It’s coming for us, and we’re the only ones who know it’s coming.

Everything’s scripted. Everyone talks from the script. Everyone but us. Everyone lies. Everyone but us.

Help us. Get us out of here. Out of this hellworld.

They’re cleverer than we are. They’re ahead of us.

 

We were smart enough to see the operation – how? To work out what they were up to – how. But not smart enough to counter it. To, like, join battle.

Our native intelligence. Our native … powers of discernment. We weren’t taken in. We weren’t fooled. All the worse for us, because we know the horror. We know the skies are darkening.

We know their reach. We know their motive. We know their end goal. We know what they Want. The whole fucking world – that’s the prize they seek. Nothing less. And there’s nowhere to escape. Nowhere to go.

 

Do we have what it takes? We have nothing. We’re on the side of nothing. We’re on the void’s side. Wishing the void would swallow the world.

 

We’ve had enough of living. Enough of living in this world.

No more of this. No more. We can’t take anymore.

 

When will the void reach us? When will the void come for us? Take us home. Like an anti-Rapture. Like non-salvation.

All of us hate ourselves, despise ourselves and we want it all to end. Because the end is simple. But things are not simple. Nothing’s simple. The world itself … is too old. Too twisted. Too gnarled.

 

The only road is suicide. The only option. And we can’t even kill ourselves. We can’t even bring it to an end. We don’t have the will. Isn’t that pathetic? So we want the universe to end it now. To end our agony. But the universe is disobliging. The universe isn’t going to help.

We pray to God to excise us. To delete us. To wipe the memory of us from the earth. But there is no God, which means our prayers don’t work, which means there is no death, which means there is no end.

 

What kind of obsession is this? What kind of displacement activity? What does it take the place of? Real lives? Actual lives? But what are those? What could we know of those?

Do people out there in the world live real lives – actual lives? Are they actually going somewhere? Is it possible not just to be lost? Not just to turn in circles now and forever? Is it possible to break the chain? To step out of this – endlessness? To cut the knot?

 

Toying with death, playing fort-da with death. This is our drama – pathetic, isn’t it?

This is what we are. What we do. Together. With each other. This is what we drive each other to. This is how we torment each other.

Won’t someone stop us. Won’t someone prevent it? Won’t someone call a halt?

An argument for the inexistence of God. The greatest argument – the greatest proof. That we should be allowed to go on. That we continue in our way. That we’re compelled to do … this. Whatever this is.

No mercy is being shown us. We’re left to turn in our circles. To chicken scratch. We’re left to the andmoreagain. To the enteral return of our defeat, which is really only self-defeat.

 

Blank skies. Void skies. Nothing skies, with no one there.

 

We want to bring life to climax. To conclusion. We want something to begin – by ending. We want rising action. Ascent. We want to climb to a point of no return.

 

Do not pretend that there’s any point to this. Do not regard this as worthwhile. Do not take this for anything of importance.

But we don’t!

 

The basic question. The first question. The urquestion. Why? Why us? Why this? Why anything? Why the world?

The affront of our existence. The insult of our existence. To ourselves, who exist. The affront of having to exist. That anything has to exist.

The affront of the world. The affront of time – and space. The affront of everything. The affront of it all existing.

The universe should apologise to us – for existing. And we should apologies to ourselves – for existing.

We are in the wrong, and we know this, which means we are in the right – about being wrong. Which means we’re undeceived. Because we live in deception and know that deception … Because we speak in lies and know that they’re lies …

 

This is what we have in common. This is what we share. We’re fellows in alienation. In failure. In falling away from the world. In disappointment. In fuck up.

We’re compatriots in disaster. Because we know our lives as disaster. Because we know the world as disaster, in that it hasn’t ended our lives. We’ll live on together. We’ll go on together. In the knowledge that we shouldn’t live on. That we shouldn’t go on.

That we exist is proof that the world shouldn’t go on. That we are at all shows very plainly the world’s failure. The world’s randomness. The absence of a divine plan or any plan. That we’ve been allowed to continue. To wander on. Is all the proof that’s needed …

 

We’ll worship only what meant our destruction. A killing god – the only god we could believe in. God as death sentence. God as wrath – as the embodiment of our wrath, who do not want to live. God as end and utter end. In an endless world. God who is nothing other than the end, the apocalypse. Nothing other than judgement, and a total judgement.

I’m staying too long, aren’t I? I suppose I should just leave after we’ve fucked and showered. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

I shouldn’t stay afterwards. I should just … disappear. Instead … here I am …

 

All I want is here. All I really want. You. Your … cock. Up here in this flat. Everything else is … illusion. And far away. Infinitely far. I could stay here forever. Or at least sleep. Stay the night.

Would you like me to stay the night? Or would I get in the way of your magnum-opusing?

I promise you I wouldn’t be pesky at all. I wouldn’t talk. I would say a word. I wouldn’t laugh. Actually, I might. I’d just sit back on the sofa and watch a genius at work. Laugher. What do you look like, working? What’s the expression on your face?

No, I’d just open a bottle of wine while you wrote. Do you have a good bottle of wine? I could put on the TV – oh, you haven’t got a TV. Pick one of your books of your shelf. They all look so readable. [Laughter.] The Work of Fire. A real page turner. Or I could just look at my phone. I’m sure I could find something to entertain me.

Am I too irreverent for you? Too trivial? Too distracting? I can see why. You want to get on with Serious Things and I’m just … here. Sitting on the sofa. Waiting for another fuck, maybe … Because I’m … insatiable …

 

This is supposed to be the time of infatuation. We’re supposed to be insatiable. We’re supposed to never tire of one another. This is what our lives are supposed to be for. The lead up to … reproduction, or whatever. Though we’re never actually going to reproduce.

I’m the sort of person you ought to loathe, philosopher. So why don’t you? You’re in the enemy’s camp. With the enemy’s wife. You’re a traitor. You’re betraying yourself. And your people. And philosophy. And everything.

 

All your hatred. Your radical politics. Your radical everything. Your dream of writing a hand grenade that you’d throw at the bourgeois. At business studies. At the whole world. Because they don’t read the same books as you. Because they don’t give a fuck about the books that you like. Because they watch boxsets. And Netflix. And aren’t into high art. And don’t actually loathe themselves. Don’t measure themselves against mad Europeans …

 

You’re getting the best of me here, in this room. Not the boring me. Not the mundane me. Not the pub conversation me. You wouldn’t like me, I think, if you met my friends. You’d find me dull. My conversation wouldn’t interest you.

I’m better here … This suits me in some way … This way of talking … I’m interesting when I come here. I interest myself. I say unexpected things. I talk into the air. You bring it out in me. This … situation.

 

What’s supposed to happen next? What’s the next step? In our … imbroglio. Is there a plot to this? What’s the next twist or turn? Are things becoming more complicated, or less?

 

You’re supposed to feel a heightened ability to make me laugh. That’s supposed to me make you feel empowered. To look after me. To make you feel like a man, philosopher.

Is that how it works?

And to make me feel like a woman. A hetty-betty woman. In a hetty-betty relationship.

See, you’re not so different from everyone else in the world, philosopher. And nor am I, though I never claimed to be.

 

If I told your stories of my life, what would they say? What would they be about? What I’ve learnt. The person I’ve become. Who am I, anyway? I scarcely know, when I’m round here. I could tell you my dreams, but they’re not very interesting. But then I’m not very interesting.

And I’ve lived a very ordinary life. A life like anyone else. But we all live lives like anyone else, don’t we? We’re all very alike. Even you. You’re just another human being, I think. We’re all just other human beings. And I love that. And I love us all. I love everyone I can see from the window. Mothers and their children. Is that stupid? But I do.

Life is people, like my grandad used to say. Life is people.

 

What allows us to say anything at all? I don’t want to tell stories. I want to get behind the stories. I want to talk, without saying anything. I want to hear the words I say. And you say. Just hanging in the air. Just vibrating there. Just hanging there. Just suspended there, in the light. In the skylight’s light.

Listen to me … listen to me talking. How come I can talk like this? How did I get to talk like this? Who am I, when I talk like this? It’s like someone’s speaking in my place. It’s like someone’s taking my place. Who’s been substituted for me.

It’s like … I’ve swapped places with the air. Like the air’s speaking. Like the light is speaking. Like the day’s speaking. Like this is the speech of the afternoon.

It’s like I’m at the brink of something. Like I’ve been lifted up to some … threshold. And I can say all these things.  And I’m not who I was anymore. And I’m not even drunk. Or high. Or anything.

And I don’t feel confused, I feel lucid. But I don’t understand what I’m saying. Lucid – full of light. Only it’s not my light. It’s got nothing to do with me.

Like I’ve been hypnotised. Like I’ve been mesmerised. And I’m saying things that are true. Very true.

What am I becoming? Where is all this … talk taking me? Do I sound pretentious? I’ll bet I do. Desperately pretentious. Insufferably pretentious.