Work in Progress

Is there anything we can hang ourselves from? These lampposts?

How would we climb up a lamp post?

How long does it take to drink yourself to death?

This wine’s too disgusting to let you drink yourself to death. You’d just throw it up. Spit it out.

We’re humiliating ourselves … snivelling. Praying. When we should be planning to blow it all up.

Shouting: We’re TERRORISTS, do you hear? Come and arrest us! We HATE you. THIS IS HATE SPEECH! HATE AGAINST YOU! YOU ORGANISATIONAL MANAGEMENT FUCKERS!

Throwing a bottle. Smashing it.

We want to BLOW YOU UP, FUCKERS! We want you DESROYED! You SATANISTS!

They’re listening in on us – or their algorithms are.

Come on – they have nothing to fear from us. They’re not listening.

We might be under surveillance, but what does it matter? They can’t be bothered. We’re no threat. We can say whatever we want. Isn’t that the worse thing: that they haven’t sent their flying monkeys to destroy us? That they’re just letting us live? That they don’t actually need secret police? We’ll inform on ourselves. We’ll make up new and better lies – better than their lies … More colourful … They might even like our lies …

We don’t have to bring it down, the Organisational Management campus. It’ll bring itself down. In fact, it’s already destroyed. The towers have already fallen.

You think?

Absolute spiritual desolation. That’s what will catch up with them, when they’ve built their … utopia. Their monument to their false gods.

They’ll feel it. They’ll know it. The absence. The lack. They won’t be able to hide it from themselves: the distance between what they made and its meaning.

And then what?

The whole campus will be … decommissioned. Then destroyed – torn down. Like one of those ghost cities in China.

They’ll find some stupid reason why they have to demolish it all. Something implausible. There was some flaw, some error in the design.

But really, they’ll tear it down because they’ll know it as affront. As a mockery.

Did we really sell out?

Of course we did.

We should have stayed part timers.

No – fuck off. That’s just martyrdom.

But look what we became! Look what we are!

We should just resign – all of us.

Resign!?

Out of principle. As a point of principle.

Resign and do what? Go back outside? Back to part-time teaching? What are you asking?

We’re sell outs. We’re just going along with it.

Of course we’re sell outs! We had to sell out! We were going mad!

Look, if we left, they’d just replace us by scooping up some other desperate part timers out there. They’d replace us with analytic philosophers.

Quell horreur!

That’s why we have to stay – it’s not for us, but to defend European philosophy. We’re here to keep continental thought going. It’s a noble aim.

Very noble. A bunch of idiots teaching European philosophy.

We should think of ourselves as placeholders – for the thinkers who might come after us, if we can only keep philosophy open at Newcastle.

We’re not here for ourselves – but for UK European philosophy! How selfless! How noble!

After us, the deluge – the real deluge. We need to stay at our posts. To be the last stand. We’re like the Greeks at the Hot Gates, holding back the Persians. Magnificent!

Always desertion. The paragrads are always leaving us behind.

We only have to follow them. To find the paragrads. To go where they’ve gone.

But how? How do we get out?

Maybe we haven’t reached that spiritual level.

The paragrads found a way out.

They just – went? Where did they go?

Who knows? Into the air. Into the day. They turned a corner and just – disappeared.

They’re in a higher dimension now. A better dimension.

And they took our postgraduates with them.

What?

Do you seem them?

Looking around for them, our postgraduates.

Nothing.

Calling their name, our postgraduates.

No response.

Fuck. The paragrads are pied pipers …

And where’s Fiver? Has Fiver gone, too?

Fiver always wanted out of this dreadful world.

And all they’ve left is all this … stuff. Paragrad remains. The trace of their passing.

It’s the paragrad rapture.

And our postgraduate rapture.

And Fiver’s rapture. Fuck. What will we do without him?

They’re purer than us. Better …

If we were still part-timers, do you think the paragrads would have taken us with them?

Of course they would! Wherever they’ve gone isn’t for full-time lecturers …

Can you feel the weight of the buildings? Can you feel the oppression? The, like, depression. It’s pressing down. It’s crushing us.

Maybe we’re being crushed into something. That’s how diamonds form, isn’t it- by being crushed?

But the Newcastle earth is pushing back up, right. The Newcastle earth resists. The Newcastle earth is doing the crushing. They’re making it crush us.

The building just shuddered – did anyone feel that? The whole thing – trembled. Like something was passing through it. Something from another dimension.

The Bug, right?

A mandible of the Bug, just passing through this reality. The Bug’s awake. The Bug’s irritated.

The Bug’s swiping at us all. From another dimension.

Fuck the Bug.

Don’t say that too loudly!

Can the Bug hear us? Does the Bug understand English?

Look, the paragrads have disappeared into study. They’re nothing other than study now.

We’re approaching the condition of study. The pure infinitive: the to-study. The pure infinitive: the to-study. When there’s only studying – the infinite gerund. Studying studies – that’s all. Contemplation just … contemplates. That’s where the paragrads have led us.

Gelassenheit, baby.

Sure – Gelassenheit. Paragrad enlightenment.