Work in Progress

Doing something together. Being together together. That’s enough, isn’t it? Sharing whatever it is we share.

It’s about what you can’t help being. About how you show what you really are. How do you give yourself away, philosopher. Your … mannerisms. Your gestures. Your quirks. Your idiosyncrasies. All those things about you that are most you. Inconsequential things, maybe. That are just your way of being you. No one but you.

We have a corner of the night all to ourselves.

Nothing matters in the night of the world. None of the normal rules apply. They’re all suspended.

It’s like in the Blitz. People fucked illicitly in the night. They got away with anything. And so will we.

The point is to affirm idiocy, Livia mused. Not to see it as a deficiency. Not to see ourselves as lacking anything. But we were incapable of that.

We were perfect idiots, in her eyes. Beautiful idiots. Beautiful in our idiocy and because of it.

Dwelling in idiocy. In a whole ethos of idiocy – a way of perceiving and engaging with the world, with ourselves, with others …

Perhaps it takes a non-idiot to understand it, Livia said. A non- idiot standing outside it. Who’s not part of it. Who doesn’t dwell within it.


At least we’re amused by our stupidity, Livia said. At least it diverts us.

From what?

From our stupidity of course.


Livia’s love of her idiots. Of idiots.

She was grateful for idiocy, Livia said. For what idiocy had brought her. For us! For her idiot squad.

What hadn’t we taught her – or untaught her? What hadn’t we got wrong and therefore got right?

What blows on the brain hadn’t we dealt her? Great blows! Laughing blows! Gladdening blows!


The intricacies of our idiocy. Its filigree. It’s delicacy, even. Idiocy could be quite a refined thing. Like some complex confectionary.

The taste of such delicate idiocy. The savouring of such idiocy. Only a connoisseur of idiocy, like Livia, could really appreciate it. It’s too bad we never learnt to appreciate it ourselves. Too bad that we were incapable of enjoying our idiocy. But that would require a non-idiocy that none of us possessed.


Our wager: that we might have something to say as idiots – as philosophical idiots. But we don’t know how – or why. We’re too idiotic for that.

Are we fundamental idiots, or just idiots? How deep is our idiocy – that’s the question. How far down does it go?


Is there such a thing as an idiot’s philosophy? Or does idiocy always fall short of philosophy? Can you philosophise from your idiocy – or do you have to philosophise against it?

Our questions. The questions of idiots. But are the question of idiots idiotic questions?

Philosophical idiocy – is it the same as idiotic philosophy? The same thing? The idiocy of philosophy and the philosophy of idiocy: what’s the difference?


Have we ever really reached it, our stupidity? Livia wondered. Where we could really come into our stupidity? Own up to it? Inherit it?

Will we ever be able to inhabit it, our stupidity? Dwell in it.

Have we really been released into our stupidity?


Livia, too, was an agent of Stupidity, the greater Stupidity. She, too, was a servant of forces beyond her control. She, like us, served Idiocy and the self-seeking of Idiocy.

Idiocy’s desire to come to itself. To breathe real breaths. To live, for a while in the world. To attain itself in the world. To be there, for a moment, amongst us.


We should let our idiocy be idiocy: that’s what Livia told us. It was more than accepting our idiocy. More than reconciling ourselves to our idiocy. It was affirming it, our idiocy.

Let us be these idiots: that’s what we should say to ourselves. Let us step into our idiocy.

Let us be, really be these idiots. Let us own our idiocy – not fight against it. Let idiocy be the seed from which it would grow, our non-intellectual life.

Our idiocy, and the sources of our idiocy. It was channelling the greater Idiocy of which our idiocy was a part.


It’s still to come, in a way, the opening of our idiocy. It’s still ahead of us. We’re still waiting for it. We’ve yet to come into our own, as idiots.

Livia’s waiting, too. Livia’s excited. Livia knows that it isn’t here yet, but that it will be. She’s waiting to see what we will do. She’s waiting to see what her charges will do, when idiocy arrives.


Idiocy Itself. Capital I, for Itself. Idiocy, arriving. Idiocy, coming. Idiocy, terrifying – great. Like an angel. Are there angels of idiocy?


Might there be another name for idiocy? Might it be, innocence? Might there be such a thing as a divine idiocy? As a messianic idiocy?

Is there an idiot messiah, a messiah of idiocy? Is idiocy arriving as the messiah, and as nothing other than the messiah?


An idiocy that had yet to arrive, in some sense. An idiocy that hadn’t met with itself. That didn’t coincide with itself.

An idiocy that had yet to look at itself in the mirror. That had yet to bear its own gaze. That had yet to look back at itself, reflected. That had yet to say, I am idiocy, destroyer of worlds.


Drunkenly contemplating it, our stupidity. Drunkenly pleased with it and pleased with ourselves for noticing it.

This is how we entertain ourselves. This is how stupidity entertains itself, passes the hours.

Amazing that we can just entertain ourselves like this, for hour after hour. But isn’t that the truest sign of our stupidity: that we can entertain ourselves like this, for hour after hour?


Stupidity explosions, deep underground.

Stupidity bombs, dropping from the sky. Storms of stupidity, the sky darkening.

A roaring stupidity. An angry stupidity.

A greater stupidity. God’s stupidity, if there can be such a thing.


Stupidity, trying to sound its depths. Failing to sound its depths. Stupidity, pondering its own abyss. Failing to ponder its own abyss.


What makes us think that we’re especially stupid? Isn’t that a kind of hubris? I mean, why should we suppose that here’s something special about our stupidity? Something that sets it apart?


Livia used to speak of the stupidity of the humanities. Identical with the studiousness of the humanities. With the stupefaction of the humanities. With the idiocy of the humanities.


What there is to be thought: stupidity. What stands in the way of stupidity being thought: stupidity.


Stupidity’s the only thing we have. The only thing that might save us.

From what?

From knowing our stupidity, of course.


What’s the opposite of a savant? The opposite of a prodigy? Is there such a thing as a genius of stupidity?

Remembering how Livia used to quiz me about it: my literaro-philosophical writing. My philosophico-literary writing.

She used to make me tell it to her again: how I worked on my philosophico-literary writing in my Hertfordshire University years. In my commuting between campuses of Hertfordshire years. The Aldenham campus. The St Albans campus. The Hatfield campus. As I commuted to and from Watford, where I had my bedsit. Where I scraped by on my part-time wage, on the Hertfordshire plain. On my paid-by-the-hour wage.

It might seem that there was an infinite distance between Watford and my literaro-philosophy project, Livia used to marvel. Between my total bus-dependency and my philosophico-literary dreams.

Listening to Penderecki on the extra-slow bus between the campuses of Hertfordshire University. Reading Mandelstam on the stopping-everywhere bus. Listening to Ligotti, on the requiring-infinite-patience bus. Reading Helene Cixous on the stuck-in-varoius-traffic-jams bus.

And working in a department actually hostile to European philosophy. That papered its walls with articles warning about the perils of European philosophy. Of the charlatanry of European philosophy! Claiming that Deleuze was a fraud! That Derrida was an impostor! Reviews of forensic accounts of Heidegger’s Nazism! Of Carl Schmitt’s Nazism! Of Paul de Man’s fascist past! Reviews of Intellectual Impostures. Of Fashionable Nonsense. All that kind of stuff.

My Hertfordshire years might seem entirely inimical to my philosophical ambitions, let alone my literaro-philosophical ones. And wasn’t I busy not just writing philosophy papers (my so-called philosophy papers), but with my literaro-philosophical musings? Wasn’t I at work not merely sending my academic papers out to academic journals (my so-called academic papers), but working frenziedly on my philosophico-literary writings?

Returning, after a day on the buses, to my Watford bedsit! Opening up my notebook in my Watford bedsit! Sipping my coffee and preparing to write, in my Watford bedsit! But wasn’t that the perfect place to write about my philosophical failure?, Livia said. Wasn’t it the perfect situation to bring together my philosophical incapableness with my literary incapableness. With the latter feeding the former. And the former feeding the latter. In perfect philosophico-literary feedback!

What genius: to write of my failure in the midst of failure. To write, in literary failure, of my philosophical failure. What ambition, which was disguised as anti-ambition.

There I was, reading Hélène Cixous in Watford, Livia said. Hidden from my colleagues, and the contempt of my colleagues! There I was, reading Maurice Blanchot. And Georges Bataille! An Marguerite Duras! And Clarice Lispector!

There I was, reading books that flaunted their philosophico-literariness, their literaro-philosophicalness, practically under cover! All but in enemy territory!

And dreaming of that my work might be the last literary gasp, the last philosophical gasp of that great European tradition. That it was all to end with me – to fall with me, in the farce of my literaro-philosophical writing.

I was on the verge of some great literary or non-literary breakthrough: that’s what I believed, wasn’t it? This was my equivalent of Beckett’s walk on the pier. Of Blanchot being put up against the wall to be shot. Of Cixous seeing that squirrel in Manhattan! I was the writer of the farce – of the farce that writing, and especially European style literaro-philosophy had become!

My literaro-philosophical escape capsule. She knew what I was hoping for, Livia said. She knew my secret plan.

It was my bust out plan. It was my tunnel of philosophy, my philosophico-literary opus.

I was going to write it all up – all my philosophical failures. I was going to make literature out of it – my philosophical non-career.

Which meant I was never really committed to philosophy – not ultimately. I was always merely watching myself so-called philosophise. I was always observing my failure to philosophise from a distance. And from a literary distance!

A cunning move! I was never really risking it all, philosophically. I was never as desperate as my peers in philosophy, my fellow idiots. Because I’d taken out literary insurance against philosophical failure. Because I had my literary side-hustle, which was also a literary sidestep. A secret way of justifying my philosophical life!

I thought I’d found a literary loophole. A literary get-out clause. Something to escape my failed UK European philosopher destiny. Because my philosophical defeat would no longer be a philosophical defeat if I wrote it up in the right way.

I was going to write the last will and testament of UK European philosophy, Livia says. UK European philosophy’s last gasp. UK European philosopher’s last fumblings in the dark. Its last attempts to pin the tail on the philosophical donkey …

Literature: that’s where my dreams of genius went. That’s where I stowed them, unlike the rest of us who only ever had philosophical dreams.

A genius of non-genius: that’s what I wanted to be. A literary writer who could make good on my non philosophical genius. Very cunning. A genius-move all by itself.

Of course, the potential flaw in the plan was obvious: wasn’t writing literature just as hard as writing philosophy, if not harder? Wasn’t it the case that the European literature-meisters I admired, that they were as much geniuses as the European philosophy-meisters I revered! If not more so!

Did I really think I was going to be a Blanchot 2.0? Livia asked. That I was going to be a new Hélène Cixous?

But I had an answer to that, too, Livia knew. I thought of myself as writing in a post-literary time. At a time after literature – when all the prestige of literature has disappeared. When you couldn’t do that high-falutin’ stuff anymore. You couldn’t write in a high literary register – not if you didn’t want to live in bad faith.

The ultimate excuse: these aren’t literary times, so I can’t be a literary genius – and that was my real genius. Shameless …

The most authentic literature was, to all intents and purposes, non-literary. It eschewed the high literary. The high modernist! The literature (non-literature) true to our times was a farcical literature. A literature after the literary fall, the cultural collapse. It belonged on this side of the high modernist mountains, my literature – my non-literature. And didn’t I even dream of combining my non-literature with non-philosophy? With a fallen philosophy, a philosophy of the ruins? Didn’t I want to take that non-philosophy as my subject – my very failure at philosophy. As if the only philosophy that was possible in our times was a farcical philosophy. A philosophy after the collapse, that played in its own ruins?

There is something real. And something true. And everything else is just lies.

Do you believe that? Does it matter?

Of course it matters.


Who made us? Who built us? God?

Not Mother, anyway.


What if the world Mother made is no different from the world God made? What if God is just another, bigger Mother?

God or Mother? Mother or God?

Are we children of God, philosopher? Or are we synths?

Opening the bottle.

O great wine spirit, show us the way, Driss says. O priests of the wine god in the holy night!

I just wish it was hemlock. I wish we could just have done with it all. Die like Socrates! He was positively delighted to be sentenced to death. He thought drinking hemlock was a cure …

A cure! There is no cure! They’ve poisoned the air. They’ve poisoned the earth. They’ve poisoned us – God knows. We’re sick with their poison. We’re sick with their sickness. As they want us to be.

They’ve left nothing alone. This wine just reveals the poison, that’s all. It lets us taste the poison as poison.

The only philosophy must be a philosophy of poison – that’s what Livia used to say. A philosophy that has grown from poison, and lets poison philosophise.  

interesting things grow from the poison, Livia said. Twisted things. Sports and mutants. With special gifts. The poison produced our kind – as a byproduct. As an unintended consequence.

They made their enemy, the poisoners, Livia said. The brought us into the world as near-perfectly poisoned. But they didn’t suspect that we might out-poison the poison. That one amongst us might be able to convert the poison.

Which is you, Shiva, Furio says.

More wine.

Disgusting, we agree. Still disgusting! If anything, more disgusting.

We’re supposed to be disgusted – that’s the point, we agree. Livia wanted our disgust. Disgust was to instruct us. It was to show us something. Make us taste something.

It makes me want to throw up.

But isn’t that the point? The wine makes want to vomit up everything. Everything we’ve learned. Everything we’ve known … All our philosophies … Which have never yet been philosophies of the disgusting. Which are not yet philosophies of the great poisoning.

And all the poison we’ve been made to take. All the evil stuff that we’ve swallowed down. All the noxious air that we’ve breathed. That’s made us what we are.

And we have to be disgusted with ourselves, too. We have to retch up ourselves. Expel ourselves. To be nothing other than this expulsion …

We must become an act of expulsion – nothing more. A casting out – of ourselves! Of everything we are! Everything we’ve been! What we’ve been made into!

What if Livia wanted us to keep it down? To … stomach it. To let it sink in. Pass through our digestive system. And to … convert it. That’s what Shiva did, right? That Halahala poison, or whatever.

All the destructive forces in the universe concentrated together. Shiva took it in. Drank it. He was going to sacrifice himself in order to save the universe. But then Sati gripped his neck to stop it reaching his stomach. So he held the poison in his neck …

Driss, bent over. Coughing out wine.

You failed the test, Driss!

It’s too late to hold our necks. The poison’s already reached our stomachs.

We’re metabolising it. The wine’s becoming part of us. Is that a good thing? A bad thing?

When the cry of our disgust reaches the ears of God … The cry of our … drunken disgustedness! Won’t that arouse God? Won’t it wake the angels? Won’t that be God’s cue to destroy the universe?

Livia never wanted it destroyed. Where the poison’s at its deepest, there, too is its saving power … Didn’t she used to repeat that? We haven’t fallen far enough, not yet – that’s the thing. There’s farther to go.

How can there be any farther to go?

Think about it: this is all we have of Livia now. Her wine. The wine she collected. That she put aside, after her departure. The thirteen bottles she meant us to find.

Thirteen!? What’s the significance of that? Sophia asks.

No idea, Driss says. But there’s got to be some significance. Livia was all about significance.

Or insignificance, Furio says. Or the mockery of any attempt to find significance …

We’re halfway through, nearly, Io says.

Discussion. She wanted to turn us into disgust seers. Disgust visionaries.

We’re being trained to taste the horror. Our drinking is supposed to cultivate disgust – a disgust that will take us to the end of all things. To a total sickness with the world …

And then what? Sophia asks.

I don’t know, I say.