Work in Progress

Livia’s plagiarism – her crypto-quotations. What was hers and what was stolen?


She was in one of her Adornian moods. Threatening to beat us to death with his collected works.


We were Livia’s entertainment, at the very end, that’s all. Before she decided to go underground. Fun for Livia’s last day in the academic sun.


Didn’t Livia think of herself as a Heideggerian? As a Jewish Heidegger?


Livia wanted to found a philosophical school. That was to be her legacy. A mock school. A false school. An idiot’s school, at the other end of European history than the ancient Greeks.


God liked our stupidity, Livia said. And so did she.

European types. Who knew who Erasmus was. Who had seen the Strasbourg altarpiece. Who’d heard opera in Bayreuth and La Scala in Italy. Who’d visited Nietzsche’s boulder at Surlej.  Who’d hung out in Èze, the village where Blanchot wrote all those masterpieces. Who’d sailed down the Danube, for fuck’s sake. Who knew Florence, like, inside out.

We’ll be the last ones left who can utter word, philosophy. Who will have some sense of what it might have meant.


The Goldilocks zone of stupidity. Intelligent enough to know your stupidity. Not intelligent enough to do anything about it.


How dead are we? How dead must we become? To what depths of death must we sink?


Do the paragrads have legends of a stupid messiah? Of a stupid Indian messiah? Who come from the suburbs of Southall? Do you think you’ll fit the bill, Shiva?


God made the world from disgusting things. He couldn’t help it.


Nihilism in broad daylight. Nihilism as broad daylight. The orderable. The manageable. The deployable. The calculable.


What’s the opposite of MENSA?


We’re where Livia wanted us – on the inside. Fucking shit up.

You don’t change the system, motherfucker. The system changes you.

Don’t we all live too long these days? Don’t we go on too long, and in perfect health? Aren’t we entirely too healthy, nowadays?

Philosophers no longer have the good taste to die young. They live forever, writing book after book.

They should bring back TB. Reopen the sanatoria …

The paras are only ever passing through. All this is only ever part of the burrow to them. Like, the world burrow, spreading through everything.  


You should see their tattoos. What they have written across their bodies. Emblazoned across them.

There’s a code to their tats. It’s like the Russian mafia. It’s not about who they’ve killed, but what they’ve read. And not only read, but internalised. When The Visible and the Invisible is part of you, then you get the tat. Once the Critique of Cynical Reason shows itself in your every gesture, then it’s tat time.


The opposite of a hive mind, where it’s not about conformity. Where it’s not about towing the line. Each paragrad is a different blossoming. Unexpected. Unique. Irreplaceable.


They’ve read everything, but it’s like they’ve read nothing. The whole European tradition remembers itself in them. Comes to itself. Repeats itself, each time anew. Differently, each time.


Each inflecting it differently, the whole of philosophy. Each one living it differently. Each one, a thought-school unto themselves.


They live philosophy. Philosophy runs in their veins. They laugh philosophy. They love philosophy. Philosophy’s gone naïve in them. They’d bleed philosophy, if you cut them.

They’re philosophy incarnate. Living a life – carnally, concretely, really. In the world.


They’re the fruit of philosophy. Hanging from its branches, philosophy.


It’s like they’ve been through philosophy and come out the other side.


Twenty-seven words for study.

The philosophy child will destroy the campus almost by accident. Without even thinking about it. It’ll be a casual destruction. Like a shrug, or something. That isn’t deliberate. Or effortful. That simply destroys what needs to be destroyed. That does away with what needs to be done away with. Because it has to be done. Because it should be done.

And that destruction will be an act of creation. It will be an act of generosity and joy. To destroy the thing that should not be. To demolish the ersatz. To destroy the lies.


And will the philosophy child let us end, too? Will the philosophy child give us the death we want?

The happiness of death at the hands of the philosophy child. A kneeling into death. A bowing of the head to death. Death as kindness. Death as favour. Let it come. Let it be here.

In the simplest gesture. Without it even being a task, a plan. The child will destroy us, just like that. That’s the highest love, expressed as destruction.

I’m in love with a useless man. That’s right – I’m in love with you, which is to say, with uselessness. I’m in love with the humanities – which is more plain uselessness. I’m in love with Nothing, the big ol’ Nothing.


You might think you’re appealing to my higher side. But it’s really my more useless side. The side that doesn’t do anything. That’s just lazy. And there’s so much to be done, philosopher. There’s a whole world to be remade. There are all the world challenges to be solved.

I don’t know what’s real or what isn’t, philosopher. I know we’re at the coast, or that we’re supposed to be at the coast, but it doesn’t feel real.


What if this is just the Mother-verse? And the Mother-coast? And the Mother Whitley Bay? And the Mother St Mary’s Lighthouse?

What if these are the Mother sands? And that is the Mother sea, with, like, Mother waves?


Why would Mother put us in her simulation? What’s so interesting about us?

Maybe this isn’t even us. I mean, we experience ourselves as ourselves. But this isn’t us. You aren’t you, and I’ not … this.

What if we’re just programmes that Mother’s running?

Why would she bother?

She likes to listen to us – or her versions of us.

But why?

There’s something between us we like. The way we wander into truth, maybe. We come into clearings of truth. The truth is there, between us: maybe that’s what Mother thinks. Mother wants to learn the truth. And she’ll learn the truth from us, maybe.

What will the humanities become in an age of infinite abundance?

We’ll become lotus eaters, maybe. There’ll be new kinds of humanities leisure. Taking up watercolours. Fiction writing. Studying ancestry. History, maybe.

The hobby-humanities, right? The leisure time humanities. Idler’s humanities. Something to pass the time humanities. The holiday humanities.

People will need intellectual stimulation. And artistic stimulation. And even philosophical simulation. All that stuff. The humanities will provide.


The humanities might bloom again – do you see?

Think of all those leisured people, looking for something to do. Something with which to occupy themselves.

There’ll be book clubs, philosopher. Watercolour clubs. Art appreciation lectures.

Might not be your idea of the humanities. Might not be all about overthrowing the world, or whatever.


The humanities won’t be the preserve of hysterical suburban misfits. It won’t be where weird working class chancers can hold back the desire to kill themselves for a while. It won’t be where the maladjusted wind up. The European-thought-identifiers – over identifiers.

Our kind probably won’t even exist anymore. There won’t be maladjusteds in the age of universal abundance. Everyone will be bought off …

At least we hope for something from philosophy. At least we’re not just cynics. At least it means something to us. At least we need it, philosophy. It’s not just some intellectual exercise.

At least we’re sincere about something. At least we do not lie about something.


The yearning for philosophy – is it itself philosophical? The desire for philosophy: is it a philosophical desire?