Work in Progress

This is a temporary autonomous zone. Or even a permanent autonomous zone.

They’ve seceded. They’ve given up on the world. Given up on politics. On philosophy, even. Unless their philosophy is a giving up of philosophy.

An idled philosophy: that’s what they’re pursuing. A philosophy that doesn’t try to do anything. That never seeks completion. To round itself off …

They don’t think in abstractions anymore. They don’t worry about the meaning of life. Or language. They just live. And living is … meaning. It’s a step beyond philosophy. Or maybe a step back from it.

They’ve reverted into some pre-adult state. And some pre-human state. Is that right, Sophia? You’re the expert. They’ve given up their … humanity. They’re … devolving.

 

They’ll never finish their PhDs – and that’s part of it. They’ve set off … in no particular direction. They’ve wandered away … with no particular goal.

They’re idle. They’ve lain down their tools. They’ve closed their laptops. They’ve put their books back on the shelf. Returned them to the library. They don’t read anymore. They don’t have to. They’ve read enough. They read everything, back in the day. And now they’re forgetting everything – nearly.

After learning, after study (but it’s also part of study) comes forgetting. After years of work, years of idleness. After the filling of the head, the time of the emptying of the head.

There’s a way of dwelling in … ignorance – is that the word? Unknowing – is that it? Non-knowing, so long as the non- is understood to be in now way privative.

It’s like a falling asleep, after all the years of alertness. It’s like dreaming from all the things you’ve forgotten.

 

When you give up, you relinquish your academic dreams. When you give up on the very idea of the university. When you let the rhythm of study take you outside. Away from the institution. From all bounded spaces.

When you just … cast off. Pull up your anchor. When you spacewalk, with no destination in mind. Just the vault of space around you. Just the great, dark immensity, and the lights flashing.

When you take the exit. Let yourself out. The exit into what? When you move away, just away. When you step into a greater sphere, and a still greater one. Farther up and farther in, and all that.

 

When you live wholly in Desire. In Eros. Where you seek after nothing. When you desire desire, that’s all.

The intensification of desire. An erotic … gap that can’t be closed. A waiting for waiting. When you look for nothing that isn’t already there.

Paragraduate Zen, right?

 

There are whole … landscapes of which we’re unaware. Thought-landscapes. Life-landscapes. They’re unimaginable. As though they’d discovered new colours.

 

And that’s what they’re turning this building into. It’s an institute for advanced study.

Study of what?

Just study. It doesn’t need an object.

 

They’ve undergone trials … spiritual trials. Philosophical trials – obviously. That we can’t imagine.

This is post philosophy. This is after philosophy, in some sense.

There are no more questions here. Or rather, they live within the question – the most profound question. They seek no answer. It’s about a turning of time. About time become … useless. Unproductive.

 

What’s the opposite of concentration? Of focus? That.

It’s an opening of the mind. Of the head. A taking-in of very deep breaths.

 

We can’t understand the level they’ve reached. The … state they’re in.

A blessed state – we can call it that, but we can have no idea of what it means. They’re a long way ahead of us or behind us. Or to the side of us. Adjacent to us, but in another dimension. A better dimension.

 

Fundamental research, that’s what they’re doing. That has no … impact. That isn’t for anything. Research that’s so deep that … So basic that …

 

We have to repent for our academic ambitions. For the papers we’ve written. For the books. Even for our PhD dissertations – for completing them. Even that is unforgiveable, for the paragraduates.

 

They want to remain within the eros of desire. To stay true to it – not to betray it. They don’t want to give up on their desire. Which isn’t to finish your work. Isn’t to bring it to term. Isn’t to conclude, but to … let it go, all of it. To let it disperse. Throw it into the longest grass and let it rot there, your drafts, your unfinished work. To let it be read by the sky. By the sun. By the air. To let its pages open for no one. Just blow open as the breeze catches them.

 

Abandonment. Giving up. A relinquishing of purpose. And the search for meaning. And the search for anything. All purposive thought. That’s what the paragraduates are about.

Who did this to us? Who was it? Who’s responsible? Who came up with the plan? Who instigated it?

Who tried to destroy us – our bodies? Our souls? Who tried to sterilize us? Who wanted to dim our skies? Who wanted to poison us? To poison the soil? To poison our food? To poison the rain? To poison the water?

 

We have to understand the dimensions of this war.

 

The vastness of their plans. Their sublimity. They think of everything, don’t they?

 

Like, what entity or intelligence is running this?

A demonic one.

Face it: we’re maggots on the rotting body of philosophy.

 

We’re guardians of the pathos. We stand guard over the great European moods. We have versions of them ourselves.

 

Not the mathematico-philosophical, but the literary philosophical. That’s where we went wrong.

 

European philosophy – driven into the most lowly unis. By the rigged system. By analytic philosophy hegemony. What chance did we have?

 

Cramming European philosophy into our clown car.

 

There’s poison in the old European well! Fire in the old European hole!

 

Do you ever think you’ll be part of the continental philosophy elite? The jetsetters? The don’t-have-to-try-anymore types?

Cicero 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.

 

All that’s left of the humanities is pathos. Oh that ol’ humanities feeling!

 

The humanities’ last gasp: on our nights of drinking. The last humanities: on our nights at Trillians.

 

Trillians: it was our version of the university. The counter uni. The shadow uni. The deep drinking uni. The university of Trillians.

This is God’s suicide watch. God’s looking down.

Have we ever really reached it, our stupidity? 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?

 

Cicero herself was doubtless an agent of Stupidity, the greater Stupidity. Cicero’s Purpose was not her own. 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 while, in the world.

 

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 could bear its own gaze. That could look back at itself, reflected. That could say, I am idiocy, destroyer of worlds.

 

We haven’t seen it yet. We haven’t experienced it all yet. We haven’t got there yet. It’s still to come, 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.

Cicero’s waiting, too. Cicero’s excited. Cicero 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?

And might there be another name for idiocy? Might it be, innocence? Is there such a thing as a divine idiocy? Is there 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?

We were idiocy carriers – that’s it. And we knew it. We’d been infected by idiocy. But we hated it, our infection.

Again and again, to expose it to the light, our idiocy. It had to be confirmed to us, our idiocy. Nothing was more important. We’ve only ever brought ourselves into situations where it where it would be more clearly manifest, our idiocy.

 

Experiencing our idiocy again – and anew. Again, and as for the first time.

Our idiocy. And the ferocity of our stupidity.

 

We should let our idiocy be idiocy: that’s what Cicero told us. It was more than accepting our idiocy. More than reconciling ourselves to our idiocy. It was affirming it, our idiocy. Our idiocy, and the sources of our idiocy. It was channelling the greater Idiocy of which our idiocy was a part.

Let us be these idiots: that’s what we should say to ourselves. Let us step into our idiocy. We should let idiocy drink a toast to idiocy. Receive a draught of real idiocy, deep 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 intellectual life.

It was really a question of calling forth Idiocy – the greater Idiocy. We should let it be, the Idiocy of our idiocy. The Stupidity of our stupidity.

 

What you could power with it, our idiocy? Certainly, a philosophy department. Cicero’s philosophy department could be plugged straight into our idiocy. We could give idiot lectures and deliver idiot seminars and set idiot assignments. And raise idiot student in turn. Cohort after cohort. And send them out into the world, infected with idiocy.

We could devise a whole idiot syllabus. A whole stupidity curriculum. Of course!

 

We could sacrifice of a philosophy department to stupidity. A philosophy department entirely given over to idiocy. Through which idiocy burns. From which the flames of stupidity leapt up. A sacrifice! To the gods of stupidity. In honour of Stupidity.

 

The university would see us and tremble. The academic staff would shrink from us. Clear a path from us. Behold, they would say, the Stupid Ones have come. The inheritors have come. Those to whom the university belongs now. The barbarians, from far off places. From the far off lands of stupidity.

We’d Unfathomable to them, in our idiocy. We’d bring them what they could not grasp.

The university would tremble. The administrators would flee the horror.

Chaos unleashed! The tohu vavohu of the university! Chaos primeval!

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?

 

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.

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?

 

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

The dimensions of our idiocy. How far does it extend? What does it include? What does it enclose?

Did Cicero’s Europeans see in us what would succeed them? And succeed the university? Did they whisper in their hearts, the barbarians had come?

Did they not understand Cicero’s apocalyptic mission? That Cicero was an End Times impresario?

Did they sense it, those Europeans, that were an invading force, meek as we seemed? That we brought with us the seeds of their destruction?

That we were an occupying army, nothing less. Cicero had brought us in, but what had she brought in? Who had she ushered over the threshold?

That we bore the Sickness with us. That we came with the Hatred. That we brought with us Disturbance. That we were Contagious. That we brought the Plague that would destroy the university. That we were bearers of it, the anti university virus.

That the Charge was building up. That there was Electricity in the air. That the Lightning would strike, soon, soon. That we were the heavy clouds from which lightning would strike.

Did fear grip them in their hearts, Cicero’s Europeans? Were they frightened? Was that the reason for their small talk? As if they could try small talk, with us! As if they could talk to us as to anyone else! As if we were any other young academics! As if we were like any of the other up and comings!

Getting jobs raised our expectations. We expect more from life now. It’s fatal.

We were given too much hope. And security. Things have been too good.

We need difficulty. We thrive in difficulty. What a joke. Who were we before we came here. Scattered. Lost. Solitaries. Well, we’re not solitaries anymore, are we? We have each other. Friendship … if this can be called friendship.

At any rate, we’re not entirely alone. Life doesn’t entirely disgust us anymore. We’re not entirely appalled. But that’s what we should be: entirely appalled. That’s what Cicero would have wanted.

Entirely appalled. Appalled at everything. World-hatred: we were full of that. World renunciation: that was our gift.

We were natural Gnostics, she said. It came easily to us: world rejection, Gnosticism. Some vague faith in something else. In something hidden.

 

She’d had to learn Gnosticism the hard way, the slow way, Cicero said. In a communist country!

She came to Gnosticism gradually. But us – it was as though we were born to it. As though we’d woken into it. As though we first opened our eyes in Gnosticism.

We were prodigies of a sort, clearly. Gnostic prodigies. Savants of world hatred.

Cicero should learn from us, she said. She would watch us very carefully. And so she did. Drinking with us. Listening outside the lecture hall when we were teaching. She watched and she listened. She was learning, she said.

 

Amazing that she’d find such Gnosticism here, in this country, she said. Here! Where life was good – or where it once seemed good. Where it didn’t seem entirely disastrous. Compared to where she grew up, God knows. To where she was from. And what she was used to.

The UK provinces held surprises. The UK sink estates. There was something special about of cultural poverty. No religion – of course. No political hope. No competence. And everything falling apart.

No one reads, in this country. No one thinks. Not in those places. The places from which we came. Out of which we burst. Thinking only of escape.