Work in Progress

The postgraduates have been beamed up, or something. It’s the postgraduate rapture.

What about the party? I don’t understand.

It’s the postgraduates’ way of saying goodbye. They’ve joined the paragraduates now. They’ve escaped.


I can’t believe the postgraduates left us behind.

They’re in a better place now.


Why can’t we be beamed up, too?

Because we’re not as young. As pure.

What about Fiver – he’s gone, too.

He never finished his PhD.

Of course.


Didn’t you hear that whooshing sound? That was the postgraduates being beamed up. They’ve left us – this whole dimension. This timeline, or whatever. There’ll be no more postgraduates, ever again.

They were too good for the world.

We’ll never hear them sing, not anymore.

Which is it, philosopher: is it all unreal – or is it evil and disgusting and so on? Because those two things are very different.


Is everything unreal or evil and disgusting? Dissociation versus disgust – which is the more profound Grundstimmung?


Feeling unreal isn’t the same as feeling disgusted.

Maybe it’s the feminine version of the same thing.

 It’s all too real. It’s stiflingly real.

 I just want to drift off into vagueness. Vagueness is, like, my superpower. I’m good at vagueness.

I want to vague out. Vague out the universe. Vague out myself. Vague out everything. I’ve had enough of everything.


Vague – that’s the strategy. Vague out – that’s what I do in Organisational Management meetings. That’s what I do when Alan talks to me. Where were you? Alan will ask me. And I’ll say: nowhere. Anywhere but here.


It’s like I’m just bleeding out into nothingness. It’s like I’m evaporating. Can human beings evaporate?

You sound like a stoner.

It’s the afternoon. It’s what afternoons do to me. It’s about taking about God does to me.


Can we smoke something? Do you have anything to smoke? Do you have a stash hidden behind your Angelopoulos DVDs?

Have you ever seen the nakedness of the void, postgraduates? Could you bear to see it? Only at a certain point. When you’re ready for it. And perhaps you’ll never be.

You won’t know it unless you work part-time. Until you know full precarity. Only then. Because the part-timer works beneath the void. Beneath the empty sky.

Only the part timer can see it: the void. The part-time European philosopher. The part-time idiot European philosopher. With no prospects!


Follow their example, postgraduates. Start the equivalent of an underground church. Of an apocalyptic cell.


It’s a matter of ascesis. Of some deliberate discipline. Of discovering a way of life, and philosophy as a way of life.

Don’t do what we did. Don’t compromise. Don’t think you’re condemned to a life like ours.


Refuse the world, postgraduates. Scavenge. Glean. Live in the margins. Reinvent what it means to live.


Find postgraduate Narnia! Postgraduate Neverland! Find the forest at the back of the wardrobe. Proceed second to the right, and straight on till morning.

Be like the lost boys and girls. Be lost postgraduates, living in the Home Under the Ground.


Alas postgraduate Neverland is closed to us. And we’re too old to enter postgraduate Narnia. Too old! Too corrupt! Too tainted with the world! And with all the things we’ve had to do to survive in the world!


We need some of your postgraduate fairydust. Sprinkle a little upon us. We need to believe in you, postgraduates. To light the fire of our belief from the fire of yours. To sing out Little Drummer Boy and its cousin-songs …


You safeguard study, we who have forgotten what it is to study, postgraduates. You hold onto time – to study time, time without end, without goal.


Dig out your warren, postgraduates. Surround yourself with the earth. Hibernate here, if you needed to. Vegetate in the darkness.


Build dens, postgraduates. Go down. Stay down. Be unnoticeable. Undetectable.

Keep your heads beneath the parapet. Hide when the tourists walk through the Victoria tunnel. Build a whole civilisation down here. An anti-civilization …


Become new kinds of cenobite. In a new kind of desert.


You’ll barely remember us. You’ll tell fantastic stories to each other. Forget the old life. The worldly life.


There’s to be no finishing anything, postgraduates. Only suspension. Only pause.

Becalmed: that’s what you’ll ee. Adrift. On the high seas! Spacewalking. Drifting through the heavens.

Potentiality – that’s what you’ll have. But unrealised potential. Never to be translated into action. Never to become anything.

Perpetually larval: that’s what you’ll be. Perpetual nymphs. Always changing, like wax in a lava-lamp.

If we keep you safe, we keep something of ourselves safe, too. Our hopes and dreams – isn’t that it? The dreams of a new kind of human being. Homo ludens, not homo faber. No work, but life. No praxis. Not an actor, but a player.


We are pilgrims in this world: haven’t you taught us that, postgraduates? We’re strangers in this world. Migrants. In perpetual peregrination.


You don’t have to be awake anymore, postgraduates. Sleeping philosophers: that’s what you’ll become. Dreaming philosophers. Who’ve given into sleep. Who aren’t like us, all awake, all vigilant, all ardency, n the perpetual emergency …

Sleep for us, postgraduates! Dream for us! Sink into the earth! The dreaming earth!


An underground International: that’s what we’re dreaming of. On your behalf! Exile in the desert of the earth! Finding the least evil place in the world, and hiding yourself there.

Such a moderate, Gazelle. We need moderates. There’s plenty of work for moderates. Not everyone has to be crazy, do they? Or stupid. Or imbeciles. But there’s another sense of work. Livia’s work. Livia’s plan.

Oh, stop with your Livia’s plan.


We were to have no investment in the world, that’s what Livia said. Wasn’t that the point? But you’re invested in things, Gazelle. You have a future. You want a future in this world. You want good things to happen, and even expect good things to happen. You’re a reformist, not a revolutionary.

You don’t want to abandon it all, Gazelle. You haven’t got the temperament. You haven’t reached the disgust that we have. Maybe because you were never really an hourly-paid part timer. Maybe because you had a least a couple one-year posts. Maybe because you were always going to get a job or at least a postdoc somewhere or other. You never really were sick with precarity.

But above all, because you’re several IQ points above us, Gazelle. It’s a matter of raw intelligence. Which is largely inheritable! Which, over a certain age, you can’t do much about!


Does everything have to be a disaster?

Yes it does Gazelle. Yes it does. A disaster, or heading towards disaster. balancedness. This isn’t a time for the well-balanced. For moderation!

Madness, Gazelle. There’s no such thing as a moderate madness.


I’ll bet you don’t even believe in the Bug, Gazelle. Or in the Postgraduate Child.

The postgraduate what?


These times belong to drunks, Gazelle. And the hungover. The times belong to the end times junkies. To the apocalypse-entranced! And the eschatology-fascinated! These times belong to the sent mad. To the idiots! And to geniuses too – who knows?

These times can be grasped only by philosophers, Gazelle. Twisted philosophers. Fuck -p philosophers, full of the darkest Grundstimmungen. This isn’t a time for good sense. Or common sense. This isn’t a time for moderation. For being sensible. For well balanced arguments.


You can work away on Susan Taubes, Gazelle. But you’ll never understand why she killed herself. Why she took her own life, in the end.

She was fucked up by Jacob Taubes. He was a monster. She was head fucked. Driven mad.

It was her Gnosticism, Gazelle. A direct result of her Gnosticism. Her death was a following through of everything she wrote.


Which is why this isn’t a time of sober critical exegesis. You have to be Susan Taubes, rather than just write about her. It’s not enough to paraphrase her work. To weigh up and assess her arguments.

It’s an emergency, her oeuvre. It’s a cry. Don’t you feel that you have to acknowledge that somehow? Isn’t failing to do so the worst kind of bad faith?

You have to look at your situation, Gazelle. A little suicidalism won’t do. A little modesty. It has to be greater than that. Madness, Gazelle – that’s what you have to unleash. It’s a matter of a personal apocalypse.

You have to be destroyed, Gazelle. Broken in two. Could you let that happen to you?

You have to feel the tension. The forcefield, or whatever. Between you and what you’re not – between you and Susan Taubes Between you and genius. Between you and … the thunder. From which the lightning might come.

Only those who are really fucked in the head, Gazelle. Only those … who know their failure – really know it. That it isn’t just failure. That it isn’t about throwing over thinking for life – for love, or whatever.


What do you hate, Gazelle? What do you love? Do you think Susan Taubes is your ticket out of here? Your scholarly commentary on Susan Taubes? Your exit route. Your ejector seat from Mercia philosophy?

You’re always holding what needs to be thought at a distance. With academic tongs. Wearing academic hazmat, so you won’t be infected. With your university mask, so you won’t breathe it in.

Do you think that’s what the end times need: another scholar? Fuck scholars. Fuck scholarship. This is a time of ignorance. This is a time of generalised stupidity. Fuck the intellectual virtues.

These are the times of impatience, Gazelle. Of immoderation. Of drunken study. The times of inebriation. This isn’t a time for a scholarly career. For quoting and paraphrasing.

Degeneracy, Gazelle. Persiflage. Plagiarism. A time for the plummeting of all values. Cometh the disaster, cometh the idiots. Cometh the catastrophe, cometh those of the catastrophe. The catastrophe-wallahs. That’s who we are. Join us, Gazelle.

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.