Work in Progress

Uma, picking up a notebook. The front cover: If you don’t kill yourself, you’re compromised. If you haven’t suicided long ago, you’re complicit. The world has only grown steadily more disgusting. We stink with it, the world. We reek with world. We’re rotting, with the great rotting of the world.

Your aperçus, Uma says. Your pensées. You must think what you’re doing is really worthwhile. That must be your motivation.

I just wanted to find things to do alone in a room, I say. Other than masturbate.

Don’t try and be funny, Uma says. Don’t try to pass it off as something else …

There are supposed to be catacombs down there. Burial chambers, basically. Underground tombs. A subterranean receptacle of the dead. And that’s where they keep they have their ossuary. Where they keep the skulls of the righteous members of the old department. To remember their philosophical ancestors.

Creepy.

They have commemorative feasts. Services.

And they’re putting all this stuff in the snow, Driss says. Barium and strontium and God knows what else-ium

They’ve fucked up the air, too, Sophia says. They’ve put stuff in the air.

The great poisoning, Driss says. They’ve been doing it for years. The air’s poisoned. The earth. The water. All the plants. All the animals. And everything living on the earth or under the earth or in the ocean, or in the sky. They’d poison the sun, if they could.

They’re just dimming that, Furio says.

It’s deliberate collapse, Driss says. It’s engineered biosphere destruction. It’s soil microbiome wipeout. It’s stealth sterilization. Its staggered democide. It’s a war against everything. Fucking omnicide. The whole world’s their kill-box.

And they’re speeding up, too – that’s what I think, Driss says. It was a slow-kill programme, and now it’s a fast-kill one. It’s all happening at once. It’s, like, a thousand apocalypses now.


Everything is backwards, Driss quotes. Everything is inverted. Doctors are here to destroy health. Medicine is here to make sure we stay sick. Banks are here to destroy the economy. Weapons manufacturers will make sure we stay at war. Science is here to destroy the truth. Psychiatrists try to destroy minds.

And how does Organisational Management fit into it all? Sophia asks.

That’s the question, Furio says.

This wine’s thick, Furio says. It’s like arterial blood. It’s viscous.

It’s like that stuff the Terminator 2 guy is made of, Driss says. I think it’s going to morph into something. Or extend a prehensile limb.

And it’s warm – like it’s alive, Sophia says. Like it’s mulled itself …

And it’s actually moving, I think, I say. Or something’s moving in it. Like a wine shark …

Maybe it wants to escape the bottle, Furio says. Have you ever seen an octopus escape captivity?

I can’t drink something that’s alive, Sophia says.

I think it’s alive in death, that’s the thing, I say. Zombie wine, right?

It actually has stuff in it, Io says. Floating.

Natural sediments, Furio says.

I think they’re flies, Driss says. Satan’s, like, Lord of Flies right?

Very relevant, Io says. This is definitely a Satanic campus.

Livia was a connoisseur! Sophia says.

But she didn’t want us to become connoisseurs, Furio says. We should never feel at home with wine, she said. There should be something of the street–drinker about us. Of the down-and-out, necking white cider. And so there is …

Philosophy: the word sounds like a dream – wistful and gentle and tender, Priya says. Like one of those Japanese flowers that opens in boiling water. Like a lotus flower, blossoming.

You’re actually just on the threshold of philosophy, I say. Once you get into philosophy, it’s a whole lot more rigorous.

Rigorous? I don’t like the sound of that, Priya says.

Philosophy’s mostly badass logic and that sort of thing, I say. Critique. And analysis. The construction of sound arguments, and the testing of arguments …

How disappointing, Priya says. How academic … I think I’ll stay on the threshold. I like the threshold.

We don’t just want yes people in O.M. We need people from outside. Sparring partners. People who will … answer back.

Sure – the whole fake inclusion thing, I say. The great lassoing of dissenters.

Is that what you are: dissenters? Uma asks. Do you feel lassoed?

You want us round the campfire too, I say. Where you can see us. Where you can keep an eye on us.

You actually think you’re dangerous, Uma says. Do you seriously think you’re a challenge for Organisational Management? You think you’re unmanageable. But everyone’s manageable once you find the levers.

You don’t believe that!, I say. You’re not some Organisational Management robot!

We haven’t understood your incentive structures, Uma says. Your drivers. But we’re investigating … We haven’t worked you out yet … but we will …

We’re all about interdisciplinarity. And reducing Organisational Management groupthink. We want … cognitive, not just demographic diversity. We want to question everything … our basic methodologies …

Do you, though? I ask. Do you really?

We’ve taken you in in good faith, Uma says.

What if we just objected to it all – to Organisational Management as such? I ask.

That’s allowed, Uma says.

Why – why is it allowed? I ask.

Because it’s provocative, and sometimes we need provocation, Uma says. Organisational Management needs a kick up the rear: that’s what Alan says. Everything’s up for questioning. Everything except everything, I say.

This is the new Organisational Management, Uma says. We’re totally against the old mechanistic paradigm. We’re forward-looking. We’re all about organisational variety – pluralism. The margins, not the centre: that’s what’s important. Organisational variety. Pluralism. Opening up the managerial imaginarium in general. Alan’s always talking about the managerial imaginarium ...

Inspiring, I say.