Work in Progress

My God! What kind of people were we? How we’d fallen How we’d plunged! How we’d died! But we knew it! We could see it!

Which is why Livia saw it in us: the opposite of potential. The possibility of knowing our potential-less-ness. And therefore who knew potential. She saw it in us: the opposite of the grounds of hope. Anti-messiahs! The last people who could save anything. And who might therefore save everything …

Our postgraduates will never get jobs. We know that. They know that. They sacrificed their futures. For postgraduate glory! For postgraduate salvation!

They’re the last postgraduates, for fuck’s sake. There are no more to come. Our kind, the working-class, idiotic kind, will sink back into the shadows. We’ll leave no legacy.

There’ll be no more PhD’d types to pass through the part-time wringer. The part-time mangle! There’ll be no more of the humiliated. Of the ones starved in soul. No more of the utterly compromised. The completely humiliated. No more of the ones who sold their own souls. Prostitutes of the spirit …

Our capacity to know our humiliation – wasn’t that something? Our capacity to feel stupidity – is that what saved us?

We knew – isn’t that what set us apart? We could stand the truth – about ourselves. We could look at ourselves in the mirror. A terrible sight! The worst sight of all! There we were: failures. There we were: human disasters. But we could bear that… revelation. There we were: the apes of God. But we knew we were the apes of God. We could bear that. We could see that.

And Livia could see that we saw. It set us apart for her – from the first. From when she first saw us in our failure’s corner. In our idiots’ corner. In our don’t-come-near-us corner. In our fuck-ups-and-failures corner. In our don’t-employ-us-under-any-circumstances corner.

Is this supposed to be some kind of climax? Is something supposed to have happened? Are we supposed to have reached some kind of conclusion? Is this supposed to be a turning point? A conversion? Have we had some epiphany?

Even depth can’t bring out depth in us …

We despair over our lack of despair. Which means we don’t despair enough. Which means we haven’t reached it: despair. We need some real catastrophe to happen to us. We need some real disaster.

At least we know that we’re not spiritually advanced. Does that make us spiritually advanced? At least we know that we’re not alive. Does that make us alive? At least we know that we’re dead. Does that make us not dead? At least we know that we’re idiots. Does that save us from our idiocy?

At least we know that we don’t believe in anything. Does that make us believe in something? At least we know that we’re mediocre. Does that make us any less mediocre?

There’s not even a secret Organisational Management campus down here. They’re not even drilling mega-tunnels down here. There’s not even a bunch of kobolds living down here. We’re not even going to place explosives own here. We haven’t even reached the rock bottom of our despair down here. We haven’t even learnt some great lesson down to hear. We haven’t received our katabatic vision.

We’re desperate and tormented, sure – but not desperate and tormented enough. We’re stupid, certainly – but not stupid enough.

We haven’t reached rock bottom. We haven’t thrown ourselves into the abyss. We haven’t collapsed on the breast of the earth, sobbing.

We don’t have the depths – the spiritual depths. If we felt, really felt our despair, then we’d repent – wouldn’t we, Io? We’d actually regret what we were.

We’ve not even alcoholics. We’re not even drinking ourselves to death. We’re not even hopeless. Disgust hasn’t reached its limits, not in us. The disgust hasn’t really taken hold. It’s theoretical disgust: that’s all we feel. Except in you, Shiva. Except perhaps in you. Whip it up now: your frenzy of despair. Your wretchedness. You’re good at that. Maybe better than the rest of us. Which is why Livia singled you out. Which is why you’re our leader, or our anti-leader. Our uniquely fucked-up leader. Our leader in fucked-up-ness.

We’re at a kind of threshold. This is the most important moment of our lives.

Is it?

Seen in a certain way.

In what way?

In Livia’s way.

Why? How?

We’ve lost our hope. Our final hope.

Which is?

That someone’s going to save us.

Hope doesn’t die that easily. We can’t help nut hope. We hope nonetheless. Hope against hope. For the little drummer postgraduate. Or the ‘Philosopher Child. Or whatever.

Stupid hope.

Call it what you like.

Farcical hope.

Sure it’s farcical! That’s what Livia loved, the farce. She’s thinking of us now, no doubt. She’s laughing now. She’s clapping her hands in delight right now …

I don’t get it: have we given up our hope or not?

It’s only now that our hope is revealed for what it is: as idiotic hope. Which is to say, messianic hope.

What a farce!

Sure, it’s farce. We’re at the height of the farce!

There’s nothing but farce – so long as we hope. And we cannot help but hope. It’s our most basic … reflex. Hopelessness isn’t an option. We’ll never just sink down – not completely. Not finally. We’ll get up again. We’ll rise again. Hope again! It’s the breath of life. In spiro spiro, and so on. It’s our last religiousness. Our last religious instinct. Our last idiotically religious gasp. Our last messianic … reaching. Even here in the dark – imagine. We’ll never learn. We’ll never have learnt …

Which is our glory.

Which is our stupidity.

This is a horrible place. Livia wanted to raise us up and then let us fail. She wanted to tease us with the idea that what we wanted was at hand, was nearly there …

She wanted us to hope, and to hope against hope. And then to destroy our hope. And then to crush us. And then to destroy our hopes. Just to see what would happen.

She was a vivisector. She was a hope destroyer. She was a monster. She was a demon. And what was supposed to happen then, when we’d reached hyper despair, or whatever?

It was like that guy in Game of Thrones. The prisoner. Allowed to fuck beautiful women before they cut off his cock. They cut it off! They unmanned him! And he becomes poor, wretched Reek.

Is that what Livia wanted for us? Only she would show that we never had cocks. That we could never fuck anyone. That that itself was a lie. She’d show us that our entire adult lives were based on a lie.

And the truth?

The truth is this blank wall. These bricks. This boarded up culvert.

So what now – do we just give up and live ordinary lives? Do we drop our scholarly dreams? And our philosophical dreams? Do we give up the pretence? That would be the real test, wouldn’t it?

But we’ll go on, that’s the thing. We’ll press on, regardless. We won’t hang ourselves, or anything. We won’t destroy ourselves.

I can’t take work seriously. I can’t think work is leading me anywhere. That there’s anywhere good to go. I mean, what’s our motivation? What’s it for?

That never used to bother us. We never used to ask those questions.

Of course we didn’t! We took it for granted: our work! It was what we’d always wanted to do. We had jobs! We could work at last! We could write through the days and nights, when we weren’t teaching. That’s what we wanted, wasn’t it?

We could pretend it was worthwhile. Fuck, it didn’t even matter whether it was worthwhile. It was what we did, because it’s what we’d always wanted to do – all our adult lives.

And now? Now that we’re in Organisational Management, it all seems to pointless. It mocks us, our ambition – what we want to do. It’s become ever more absurd, and therefore more intolerable.

We’ve been forced to see what we are in the mirror of Organisational Management. We’re being shown to ourselves.

We thought we could just live out our whole lives in delusion – in fooling ourselves. But the Organisational Management move shows us the real conditions of our lives as … philosophers, or scholars, or whatever it is we are. The farcical conditions! The laughable conditions! The great lie of the university! Of the humanities! Of philosophy! Of all of Livia’s great schemes …

Except Livia wanted us to see the lie. She wanted us to know it – the absurdity. That’s why she moved us to Organisational Management.  

Deepen the farce: that was her credo. Turn the screws. Just descent and descent. She wanted only to deepen the nihilism. Turn the nihilism up to eleven.

Just think – we could be at home, writing our magnum opuses. We could have been reading magnum opus or that one. Taking notes. We could have been working …

Working – how can you bear to work anymore? I can’t even slip into the old habits – the old … work regime. I can’t delude myself that what I’m doing will lead anywhere, that it’ll be any good, that there’s any point to it. That anyone will read it. That I’ll even finish it.

I mean, how can you motivate yourself to work when you’ve been imprisoned by O.M.? When all you want to write is, Help I’m a prisoner in the Organisational Management campus.

We’ve been left for dead! We’ve been left unalive! We’ve been double-crossed! We’ve double-crossed ourselves – our own hope!

We expected too much – of course we did. We thought we could do too much. We thought something might open. A door. A chance. We thought … what did we think? That all this barbarism might end?

And instead? Blows to the head. Blows to our lives. Crushedness.