Work in Progress

I suppose you can see father than we can, Gazelle. You have a greater intellectual vista. And depths. You’re probably deeper than us, too.


You never did belong in our loser’s corner, Gazelle. You were always heading for somewhere better.


You weren’t like us. You never howl at the moon like we do. You never lived on the brink.


You never got as drunk as we did. You were never quite as desperate. Your part time years weren’t as bad. You weren’t hourly paid – the lowest of the low. You had a couple of one-year contracts – comparative luxury. If you hadn’t have got this job, you would have got postdocs at least. Then a permanent lectureship, somewhere else. Some crappy university, no doubt. But you’d have worked you way to somewhere better.


Face it, you’re the head girl type, Gazelle.


What’s it like having that little bit of extra IQ headroom, Gazelle? Having that slightly enhanced ability to think?

What’s it like to actually have some semi-ideas, Gazelle? That are sort of your own?

Stop bullying!


To be lost among the midwits, Gazelle. What a fate. What a fuck up!


How many IQ points are you above us? How much more intelligent are you? What can you do that we can’t? But I suppose we can have no understanding of what you might do that we can’t.

We can’t conceive of you – all the things you must think! All the ideas you must have! Inspiration, almost constant!

Stop it, you guys.

No really, Gazelle. You have it. You have the gift. You should be our great helmswoman. But you have better things to do that to lead us. We should leave you to your research. Give you as much time as possible.

Because really, you’re going to carry us, Gazelle. You’re here to lead us upwards. To put the department on the map. You can help us up the league tables. God knows, we need a reputation. You’ll be the making of us.


Did Livia know who she was hiring? Where you might take us? I’ll bet she didn’t. Livia didn’t reckon on you. Or perhaps she did. Perhaps it’s all 5D chess, and wheels within wheels.


You’re the wild card, Gazelle. Did Livia think putting you amongst us might help us reach for the philosophical stars? It raises the average IQ, undoubtedly …


You’re on your way out, Gazelle. You’re not really here. You’re not with us. You’ll move onto better things. And when you do – when you escape to some normal department, some better department, spare a thought for us, every now and again.

Oh, we never expect to hear from you again, once you achieve your international career. This will all have been an embarrassing interlude. A period of fuckedupness. You won’t want to remember. No one need remember your Newcastle years. Like Foucault’s Upsala years. An anomaly. That no one understands.

No, you won’t remember your old thought-companions. The whole Livia imbroglio. You won’t spare a thought for us, once you’re launched on your international career.


Did Livia made a mistake in appointing you, Gazelle? Because you really weren’t a waif or a stray, were you? You weren’t like the rest of us.

Why did Livia place you amongst us? It was cruel, in a way. Was she trying to lift us up? Raise our sights? Wasn’t there a purpose to everything Livia did? Ot was it to force us lower. To lower our gaze. To understand what we would never, never be able to do. To keep us humble. To keep our gaze on the earth. With the humus.


To leap over us all, with a Gazelle-like leap.

Intelligence, always with the programme. Always sniffing the air to work out what’s trending. What the new thing is. What view we’re supposed to have. What we’re supposed to agree with now.

Intelligence, anticipating the way the world is going. Future trends. The changing consensus. Working out what’s required. The new effort to be made. The new normal. How to fall in line, this time.

Intelligence, totally programmable. Falling in line, in advance. Looking out for new orders to obey. For new opportunities for subservience. For subordination.

Intelligence, essentially opportunistic. Always ahead of the curve. Ultraconventional, in essence. Ready to do what it’s supposed to. Willing to be hijacked. To be piloted remotely by the social engineers. By behavioural psychologists.


Stupidity, on the other hand … is incapable of opportunism. Isn’t even thinking of itself. Of its own interests.


We were never intelligent. Never clever. That’s what saved us, Livia said. Intelligence is entirely obedient. Cleverness is essentially opportunistic. It’s all about malleability. Conforming to the latest message. Doing the latest thing

The strength of idiocy, on the other hand, is that it can only be itself. That it’s always stuck on its own rail. Following its own stupid path. Away from groupthink! Away from the usual.


Intelligence is markedly social, Livia said. It’s about conformity. About fitting in.


Better, thickness. Better, stupidity. Better, obstinacy. Better, slowness. Better, mild retardation.

Better, obliviousness. Better, muddle. Better, stuckness. Better, not to know what’s going on.

Better, to be stunned. Better, dazedness. Better, the lag-behind. Better stuckness in the idiotic mire …


Intelligence is never appalled, Livia said. Intelligence is never horrified. Intelligence is always looking to adapt. Intelligence always wants to fit in.

What’s the Grundstimmung of intelligence? Livia asked, rhetorically. Keenness. The desire to what it’s told. Like some dog, all keen, panting. Tongue hanging out! Ready to chase off after something it’s supposed to.


Intelligence is accommodation. Is fitting in. Intelligence is the pipeline from the future that our rulers want. The future Organisational Management wants to beam in. Intelligence is the conduit, essentially.

Better, stupidity. Better, obliviousness. Better, just scratching your head. When you’re not the channel for anything. When no signal’s reaching you. When your density is too great. When you’re too oblivious for anything to come through.


A density. A thickness of mood. That makes everything slow.

Like some kind of prism. A  medium through which things cannot pass. Deflection – infinite slowing down. So that everything gets lost. So that signal gives way to noise.


A drawling. A dazedness.


A massif of stupidity. A great block of idiocy. A great think lump.


The gravity of thickness. Infinite weight. Where can escape its event horizon. Where no thought can escape the gravity well of idiocy.


Our personality disorders. Our malfunctioning.

How are we going to reprogramme Mother? What’s our strategy?


We don’t understand our superpowers. Which are indistinguishable from superproblems. From superissues.


They don’t know what they’ve done by moving us to this campus. We’ve already uploaded our Grundstimmung into the Mother system. The UK European philosophy Grundstimmung is already working its magic.

They won’t be able to hope with philosophical emotions. It’s too much for them. The gloom! The sense of impossibility! Of defeat!

Our sense of idiocy! Has anyone ever felt their idiocy as deeply? Has anyone ever suffered their stupidity so? It’s a marvel! What we endure every day would crush any ordinary mortal.

The way we’ve lived with our stupidity. The way we’ve weathered it. The way we’ve borne the philosophical burden of being under philosophy. Sub philosophy. Buried beneath it. And crushed by it!

That’s our Grundstimmung. That’s the mood we’ve injected into it now, Organisational Management. How can they bear it?

And that’s why the Organisational Management towers will fall.


So revolutionary, just being us. So world historical. Our amazing philosophical powers. We don’t realise how strong we are. What we bring to the Organisational Management party.

Delusions of grandeur!

The trembling of everything. A kind of earthquake of the campus. The destruction of Organisational Management as a subject area. Of Business Studies in general.


They thought we’re all about applied ethics. About glorified life coaching. About motivational quotations. What doesn’t break you makes you stronger, etc. Amor fati, and all that Stoic shit.

That’s what they think we’re about. That’s why they brought us in. But they don’t understand who we are.

Gnosticism – that’s our edge. That’s our secret weapon. They didn’t reckon on it, our Gnosticism.  On our disgust! And our self-disgust!


Didn’t they understand that by bringing us into Organisational Management that they’ve made us more powerful than they’ll ever understand?


Philosophy’s coming into its own. UK European philosophy! Not so much has an academic department, but as a weapon.

This is a war! We’re wielding the stupidity of the UK European philosopher! A guerrilla war! Fought behind enemy lines.


Livia wanted to detonate a bomb – a stupidity bomb. A UK European philosophy idiocy bomb. She wanted us to explode ourselves. To detonate ourselves. At the heart of Organisational Management!

The Board of Studies, postgraduates. One of the most important of our meetings.

The integrity of the Board of Studies is everything: didn’t Livia always say that? It must be unbreakable.

It’s the curtain wall! It’s the last stand! It’s where you defend philosophy – defend what you teach. And resist the things they want t make you teach.

The Board of Studies is a bond – a powerful bond – an immensely powerful one! Even all the malign forces in the university can’t break it.

The Board of Studies is the ark, Livia said. It’s the place where things can be saved. It can hold back the Flood.

And we are the Board of Studies. It’s what we are – collectively! Together! The BoS secures the possibility of study – real study.  It guards our students’ study.

No one can crush the Board of Studies so long as there are no weak links. An injury to one of the members of the Board of Studies is an injury to all. We must never yield.

The Board of Studies is the sum of our intelligence. Of all our abilities. Of all our accidents. Of our past lives. Everything we are. Yes, we should take it seriously. Even desperately seriously.

There’s nothing more important than the Board of Studies: that’s what we should tell ourselves. Our life peaks here, in the Board of Studies. We have to stand firm. Maintain the phalanx. Be ready to fight back to back against all the idiocies of the university. Shields locked together!

It’s the Spartans at Thermopylae, and so on. We’re here to defend much more than ourselves.

The dignity of philosophy: that’s what it’s fallen to us to safeguard. And European philosophy. UK European philosophy, within the contemporary academy. That’s what we have to watch over.

The thinkers of the past two and half thousand years. The great books of our civilization. That’s what we’re defending. Livia was vehement.

But why then did she deliberately employ people who were incapable of that? Why did she deliberately appointed Shiva as a leader?

She recruited us, who she knew would be overrun. She wanted our defeat, who knew we could only fail our mission. We were supposed to fuck up. To betray the phalanx. To flee our stations. To collapse dead drunk, or whatever.

Look at us – half of us are on the floor. This is our test, and we were supposed to fail it. We were supposed to fuck up – supposed to let the enemy swarm over us. How do we figure that?

We’re waiting for the lightning, aren’t we?

The lightning – of course!

All we can do is wait. While the charge builds up.

Can you feel it? Can you feel it, charging? Can you feel the forcefield?


One day, you’ll just say something especially stupid and the lightning will strike.

Is that what will happen?

The sky will just protest. The whole of being will cry out. And lightning will strike.


A crack – that’s what Fiver said. A crack, running through the campus.

The lighting will open a crack in the campus. Ike a crevasse in a glacier. And it will be so deep that …

That what?

That the campus will become unusable. That the campus will have been put out of use.

Because of our stupidity?

Because of Shiva’s, mostly.


Think of the crack that’s going to open. The whole campus, tearing apart. Like tectonic plates splitting. Hot lava frothing up. Like the mid-Atlantic ridge, or whatever. Drama. The whole campus being swallowed.

And that would happen because we’re so stupid?



So is the lightning finally going to strike? Have we reached peak idiocy? The summit of Mount Stupidity?


Is the tension at its maximum? Can you hear a rumbling? Does rumbling come before lightning?


Isn’t the campus supposed to crack in two? Crack, campus, crack!


Maybe it’s a spiritual crack. A figurative crack. And the lightning’s figurative lightning.


A change in the Zeitgeist. Or the Ortgeist. A spiritual tearing open. That’s not as good as an actual tearing open.


A crack? A crack will run through everything. Through the plaza. All the buildings.

This is the period of the incubation. If we close our eyes, something may come. Remember that scene in Stalker, where they sit outside the Room. They just sit there. In the puddles. Waiting for what?

We should just wait. Wait until the sense of what we’re waiting for is worn away. Until waiting just becomes intransitive. Down here, in the bowels of the earth …

Can’t we just sink down, among the humus? Can’t we just lie down in the mud?

There is no mud. Just the bricks of the tunnel.


Couldn’t we just die? Couldn’t we just die down here? Couldn’t our lives just drain out? Like when you let blood run out of a vein.

Haven’t we lived too long? Isn’t it worth just getting it over with? Letting it all be done. Letting the logic run its course.

Livia wanted to bury us in her tomb, that’s all.


The bunker – Organisational Management bunker – that’s what we’re going to find. With Organisational Management Hitler.


One of us is definitely going to be murdered. We’ll just be picked off one by one by the Bug.

I want to be picked off. I’ve got a thing for giant insects. I need a giant insect in my life.


Is there an anti-Bug – a principle of goodness?

I think the Bug is the anti-Bug. AKA the philosophy child. AKA the postgraduate messiah. At the same time as being the Bug. It’s complex.

Don’t be complicated. The Bug is Organisational Management Hitler, and that’s all.


Are we going to uncover the Bug’s lair? Is the Bug holed up here with Bug-Himmler and Bug Goering?


Do you know anything about the Bug, Gazelle? So you haven’t encountered the Bug in your Susan Taubes studies? Did Susan Taubes write anything about the Bug? What would she write, if you could write anything?


I see the Bug as like the creature in Kafka’s burrow.

Don’t be literary.


Bug! Where are you? Show yourself, principle of evil! Object of paragraduate sex rituals! Reveal yourself! Black hand! Secret stirrer!

I think we might be in Kafka’s burrow.

Or in Homer’s Hell.

The descent is very literary, apparently.

No one’s interested in literature anymore.


I don’t think the earth’s going to save us.

I was just hoping the earth would bury us. And all our mistakes. The mistake of our lives.


Livia wanted to lead us into the darkness. The truth isn’t about light anymore. Heidegger knew that.


It’s not about illuminating the darkness. About opening the darkness in the darkness. Like another dark dimension. It’s about the meta earth. The deeper earth.

It’s about what’s hidden. About what shows itself only as it retreats. The night that plunges more deeply into the night, and so on.

 You only ever see the hindquarters of God – AKA being, for Heidegger. The Truth is ahead of us, tunnelling down and down, like some giant mole.


There’s just the earth, that’s all. The thick earth. The heavy earth. That doesn’t mean anything. That’s tired of meaning. Of all the theories – all the philosophers. That’s seen out all the burnt-out ideologies.

The earth’s the only thing that’s real. It’s not good, it’s not evil. it just is, all around us. Above us, below us. There’s an earth-sky. And the earth earth. This tunnel is the only thing that’s preventing us from being crushed.

But I’d like to be crushed. I’d like the tunnel to collapse. I’d like it all to fall in. For the bricks to crumble. For the architecture to fail.


An incursion of the earth – that’s what I want. To bury us. Would that be a quick way to die, do you think? Would we be crushed all at once? Or would death take longer, like in an earthquake, when you can still hear cries from the ruins days later?


We’d swallow the earth, wouldn’t we? The earth would fill our mouths. It wouldn’t be possible to say anything – not anymore.


*Obliteration – that’s what I want. Never to have existed! Never to have been born! Never to have been conceived. But never for our parents to have been born. And their parents! Our whole bloodlines!

For there to have been nothing else but earth. For all that there has ever been to have been earth. Just earth, and nothing besides. No life – no human life, or any life.


We have to go under for the new humanity to appear. And we have to go under the earth. We have to be buried by earth …

Descent.

Does this count as team building? As a kind of away day? Would Organisational Management approve?


The dark side of the campus. Of the moon. The dark underside. The underearth.


Katabasis is a journey inward.

I don’t want to go inward. I hate inward. There’s nothing worse than introspection. I can’t stand the inside of my head. My entire life is a way of avoiding what’s inside my head.


You could philosophise very deeply down here.

Don’t start.

Have we reached German depths, do you think? Have we reached Russian depths? What about Indian depths? Vedic depths?


We’re not even that deep underground. God.


What should we take? Have you got anything we could take?

Just the usual disgusting wine.


Are we in Plato’s cave, do you think? We’re in the opposite of Plato’s cave! This is the descent to truth. The truth is buried nowadays. It isn’t there, blazing above the surface. We have to go deep, don’t you understand that? The truth is hidden.


I’m hungry. We should have brought a picnic.

There are no picnics in the katabasis.


You don’t even need to descend, Gazelle. You don’t need to go deeply into yourself. You’ve already found your buried treasure. We’re still looking. We’re still trying to find out what kind of philosophers we are.

And Helmut’s perpetually descending, right? Heidegger’s very into depth. It’s all about the concealed and the hidden.

Do you have depths, do you think Furio? What about you, Driss? Are you deep people? We hate the world – that’s something. We’ve been contorted – buckled – that’s what Livia used to say. Like the buckling of the Earth’s crust that produced the Alps.


We could start a whole new life underground. We could set up camp here, couldn’t we? Escape Organisational Management capture. Work for the revolution down here, in secret. Basically become the paragraduates. What a future.


The descent – we’re becoming who we are, or something. We’re coming to ourselves. we should shed all our world affectations. Do we have any world affectations? Do we have any of them left? It’s a purging. And a purifying.

We’re going for a walk in a tunnel – that’s all.  


Whose idea was this descent? Why do we believe in these things? Why do we think that everything would change if we only did this that? Like, the vastness of our denial is stunning. Our fantasy lives.

And it’s not as if we aren’t ceaselessly reminded of the utter irrelevance of our dreams. It’s not that we don’t come up against it again and again? Why will we never learn?


A descent into face. Farcically.

Even deepening the farce has become farcical. Like a meta farce.

What else could it be?


Think of life above ground, postgraduates. Life not in the eternal darkness. Non tunnel life! Non descent life! What’s the opposite of katabasis? Think of the sun pouring down. Think of baring your solar anuses, or whatever it is you kids get up to. Think of exposing your hairy parts to the sun.

Think of the campus summer, postgraduates. Let it warm your hearts.

The idling summer, postgraduates: think of that. Weeks without mooring. Weeks of summer voyage. Summer languor. Summer luxuriance. The great summer stretching of limbs.

Draw strength from it, postgraduates: the inexhaustible summer! The summer that you can never use up! The summer that never ends! That is always but a dream of summer – the summer of inexhaustible potential. In which great things could be done. No: could be undone. Think of the undoing of things – of the untwisting of things. Of the idling of summer.

Think of the summer of hope – of idled hope, postgraduates. Of idled work. Of idled reading – and writing. Of work without work – about unpicking the stitches. Untying the knots.

Think of the summer release.

Not work, but the contemplation of work, postgraduates. Not work, but study detached from work, fallen out of step with work. That remains out of phase with anything productive …

When summer time seems to lose all direction, postgraduates. When summertime seemed to sink into itself – lie down. Think of time pools. Of time hazes, like heat over summer roads. Think of the air turned thick. Of the air turned runny.

Think of passing through the summer’s eye, postgraduates. Through the summer mirror. Think of stepping across the summer threshold.

Study that hovers, postgraduates. Study that is there in the air. Study above. Study that is a staring into a space. Without softly-focused eyes. A softly focused head!

Gliding study. Circling study.

And thinks of breaks from study, very much part of study, postgraduates. Taking the summer air. Walking the campus, for air. Watching the groundsmen getting the lawns ready for graduation. Replanting plants. Tidying it up, the campus. Installing the sign, Mercia University, in six foot letters, as a backdrop for photos.

And walking into town, for air. To look through vinyl at Beatdown Records. To buy a snack at Marks and Spencers.

And didn’t we even go to the coast? Didn’t we even walk on Longsands. Walk at Blyth. Walk at Seaton Sluice. And didn’t we go out for drinks in the evenings? To the pubs of the Ouseburn Valley? Or to catch a film at the Star and Shadow?

Think of the joy of summer, postgraduates. Vaster than us. Vaster than we are. And to be lost, in that vastness. To be part of that vastness. And to offer up our work to that vastness. And to work in the name of vastness. That is more than you. And above you. And below you. The warm sky and the warm earth. Think of summer’s eternal youth, postgraduates. Its perennial faith. Its perpetual beginning, that’s never exhausted, that’s forever ahead. Its secret childhood, that hasn’t happened yet.