Work in Progress

We’re what Organisational Management is trying their strength on. We’re the chew toy: that’s what they think.

If they can solve us, they can solve anything. If the begin with us, with the most unmanageable, they can work their way out to the successively more manageable.

If they can break us. If they can get us in their manacles, then … the rest will follow. The more manageable subject areas. The more biddable.

We flatter ourselves.

It’s true.

Now if it was analytic philosophy, they’d be straight in the bridle. They’d want the muzzle. But this is European philosophy.

This is UK European philosophy … What’s that ever going to save? It’s the stupidity of the UK European philosophy that’s the thing. Don’t you see?

She threw the unmanageable into the heart of Organisational Management. Like a bomb. We were her bomb. We’re supposed to explode. To explode with stupidity. And unmanageability. And general … disorganisation.

We’re Livia’s hand grenade. We’re sugar in the petrol tank. We’re the mote in the Organisational Management eye. We’re the Flaw in the O.M. diamond. We’re the grit in the Organisational Management shell.

We’re the ground zero of the new reality. It’ll boom out from us, like some hydrogen bomb. Just … exploding. Ripping a hole in this fake universe.

Livia cast us in her theatre – her philosophical theatre. Livia gave us our roles. We had our place in Livia’s production. Following Livia’s dramaturgy.

We were on Livia’s stage. Directed by Livia. Set-designed by Livia. Before the whole university – and Livia.

Livia’s psychodrama. Livia’s philosophical production. Something to amuse her. In the twilight of her academic years.

She gave herself a treat. We were her treat. And then she left us. She found better things to do. But that was part of the dramaturgy, too.

I think she liked the idea of us being in Organisational Management – in the future. She liked visualising it: us in Organisational Management meetings. Us in our own meetings, talking about Organisational Management things.

In the end, she’d directed the Organisational Management move theatre, too. She’d set designed the Organisational Management stage. Placed us all in our Organisational Management roles.

Wherever she is now, she’s enjoying it, Livia. She’s thinking of it. Whatever she’s doing, she’s thinking of us in our new situation. In this meeting, right here. In Organisational Management towers. Livia’s laughing at us, wherever she is. She’s enjoying our predicament. She enjoys the fact that you’re head of subject, Shiva. She enjoys the fact that Fiver’s the administrator. She likes the idea of Gazelle as head of the Board of Studies. That Furio is doing his Furio thing and Driss his Driss thing, right here on the Organisational Management campus. And that Io’s still some ultra-Christian. And Sophia is … whoever Sophia is. Livia’s enjoying thinking oft his, wherever she is. It’s all her doing.

Part time rats: that’s what we were. We learnt a … resilience. We adapted to it – that’s what’s worst. We became … opportunists. Scavengers … Ingratiators …

Auto-humiliators: that’s what we were. Auto-exploiters. We sold ourselves out. We prostituted ourselves. We were our own pimps. Our own slave drivers.

Forced to entrepreneurs of ourselves. Forced to sell ourselves – our intellectual wares. A life lived on our knees. A life on all fours.

Like some dreadful process of natural selection. Like evolution in progress. There were people who could cope with this. Who could live like this, year after year. But not us. We were the dross. We were the losers. We were the weak. The unable to cope.

We were the ill – mentally ill. We were the mentally fucked. We were the couldn’t-cope-with-all-this types.

We weren’t strong enough. We weren’t trainable. We weren’t biddable. We didn’t accept it, the new reality. The casualised reality. We didn’t accept it … not in our hearts. Not in our souls.

We refused in our souls. In what was left of our souls. We said, no, in our heads. In what was left of our heads.

Until Livia scooped us up.

Why aren’t we angrier? Why are we so resigned? What’s wrong with us? Why are we so used to being pushed around? Why do we accept it: being pushed around? Why do we expect so little? Why do we just accept and accept and accept?

Are we insects to be crushed under a thumb? Are we mosquitoes to be swatted away? Are we a wrong that had to be put right? Are we a system fault? A system error? A mistake that simply had to be corrected?

So resigned. So fatalistic. So dominatable.

We’re the sort to get pushed about. To be swatted. We’re the sort who don’t really matter. We’re the kind they can do to what they like.

Can’t we just live our lives? Can’t we work twenty years, or thirty years? Can’t we have a job – not career, just a job? A bearable job. So we can pay off our debts. So we can save up for a pension? Can’t we just have a chance? To live like other people. To live like everyone else. Or to live like people used to live.. To get married, maybe. To settle down, maybe. To have children, maybe.

Hoping that we could stay in the background. That years would pass without anyone thinking of us. That we could just get on with business – philosophy business.

Wasn’t that enough to ask? Why did we have to be moved anywhere? Why did we have to be noticed? Why did we have to be exposed to the light – to their dreadful light?

Why did we have to be subject to their ideas? To their plans for us?

What did we do wrong? What sin did we commit? What error did we make? How did we slip up? Weren’t we careful enough? Weren’t we untroublesome enough?

We wanted to sit it all out. We wanted to escape. We wanted to survive – that’s all. To go on as we were, for a few years at least. We wanted time to … recover. To recuperate. From all our difficult years. From all our ravaged years. From all our years out there.

We wanted to lay down our heads. We wanted to close our eyes for a few years, nothing more. Couldn’t we have been allowed that? Couldn’t we have been allowed a few years of ordinary life?

Of course, that wasn’t allowed.

Our persecution. Why us, why now?

The injustice of it. The randomness of it. What had we done that’s so terrible? What mistakes were we supposed to have made?

Our misfortune. What curse was placed upon us? Weren’t we meek enough? Accepting enough? Compliant enough? Obedient enough?

Did we forget to bribe someone? To grease someone’s palm? To suck someone’s cock?

And hadn’t we been humiliated enough? Why did there have to be more abasement? Was it part of some ritual? Part of some demonic … religion? Were we being sacrificed to some strange god?

Why does it have to be so screamingly meaningless? Why do they have to turn up the nihilism? Why did meaninglessness have to thunder?

We pitiful in some way. We laughable. We derisories. We begging to be overlooked. Passed over. We who should have been on no one’s list. From whom no one was expecting anything.

We not even disappointers. We in perpetual descent. We runts of the litter. We always deficient. We runners up in life. We extras in life. We rhubarb-rhubarbers, always in the background.

We confused types. Clueless types. Best kept out of the spotlight.

We shrinkers away. We hiders-away. We stickers to corners and cracks. We slinkers away. We peerers from shadows. We hoping to pass unnoticed. Hoping to be part of the furniture. Hoping that no one notices us. Picks us out. We praying to appear on no one’s radar. We wanting only to be left alone. Left out of all spotlights.

We grubbers. We opportunists. We hunters-after-favours. We crawlers. We scum of the earthers. We beggars. We low-lifes. Under everyone’s feet!

We whiners. We witless. We vacant. We special needers. We clueless. We missers of cues. We never quite listening. We never quite getting it. We out of all loops.

We too dispersed. We too vague. We not concentrating enough. Not focused enough. We not sharp enough. We always too blurry. Too daydreamy. Too woolgathery. Too floaty.

We not quite up to it. Lacking something – not sure exactly what. Missing something. Some level of intelligence. Like a phantom limb. A phantom brilliance. A phantom genius.

We who missed the mark, and all marks. We who needed things explained to them too many times. We never knowing what we were doing. We never quite there. We never where we were supposed to be. We missing all appointments.

The UK philosopher is a contradiction in terms: isn’t that what we’ve learnt? A complete impossibility! We haven’t got the pathos. We don’t feel things the right way, let alone think them.

But at least we know that: that we don’t feel things the right way. That we don’t think them

Do you think that saves us?

It makes us would-be-philosophers. Philosophers without philosophy.

But hasn’t philosophy always been that? Philosophy loves without knowing what it loves. It’s supposed to love wisdom, sure, but wisdom is a vague word.

The only thing we love is philosophy.  

No: we’d love to be able to love philosophy. We’d love to be able to be serious. We’d love to be able to be solemn about our thinking. But we’re weak, terribly weak.

But at least we know that. Stop saying that: at least we know that. We don’t know anything.

All I can hear is our voices echoing. Is our stupidity echoing.

All I can hear is how this sounds for them, the paragraduates. How we sound.

If we just kept quiet. If we just … were here … Then what?