Our kind … So ill-fitting. So maladjusted.
Why did we appear? What are we for? What were we brought to Newcastle to do?
We’re a type that only appears at the end, as a sign of the end. Of the sickness of the end.
We’ve been disastered. We’ve been nihilised. We’ve been fucked in the head. We’ve been destroyed.
It was done to us. And now it has to be undone. With wine.
The party’s over. The end’s come and gone. We were too late to be late.
Our torments of posthumousnesss. Our throwback existentialism. Our very-late-for-the-party philosophical Angst.
Of course, our madness is really a counter-madness. Our madness is really a madness against their madness. Against their delirium. It’s a protective madness, of a sort. It’s a sheltering madness.
This is God’s suicide watch. God’s looking down at us.
Emergency extraction, that’s what we need. To be beamed the fuck up.
At least we can share the despair.
Have you got any Heideggerian poems memorised? I always liked those.
Helmut, silent.
How about you – any Bataillean poems that you know by heart?
Shaking my head.
I’d settle for a psalm. Recite a good psalm, Io.
I’ve always thought of you as an emotional support Heideggerian.
Heidegger was the equivalent of a Geordie, Livia told us. He had a strong regional accent. Wore regional clothes. Lederhosen, in his case. Used to yodel on the weekend with Gadamer. Solidly lower middle class. One of the reasons he became a nazi.
We’re like some weird fucked up family.
You be Heidegger. You be Levinas. You be Deleuze. You be … someone more obscure.
Canguilhem
Ooh, good one.
Let’s do Heidegger versus Cassirer.
It’s like children playing mummies and daddies. Do they do that anymore?
I wish the disaster would hurry up and come.
We’ll be the first to go under.
Good. I want to go under.
The disintegration loop of our lives.
Why can’t we just be nuked from orbit?
We’ve got nothing to offer but blackpills and bitterness.
‘Twere better nothing would begin’: that’s what Mephisto says. In Goethe’s Faust.
Analytic philosophy that no one reads. Analytic thought that no one cares about except analytics. Analytic papers and papers and papers, all in the same unbearable lingo.
Whereas we have Nazis. And fascists. And dubious kinds of all stripes. And collaborators.
Analytic philosophy dullness, as opposed to European philosophy wildness.
Analytic smallsouledness, in contrast to European expansiveness.
Analytic conservatism versus European radicalism
Analytic preserve-things-as-they-are-ism against European explode all-things-ism. Against European apocalypse. Against European incendiarism. Against the European earthquake. Against European world-rejection. Against European Gnosticism.
A literary Hindu – intriguing. A literary-philosophical Hindu – even more intriguing. A Hindu with European pretentions – still more intriguing.
If it wasn’t for Livia’s fishing in fetid waters. Casting her net into the dead pool. Into loser’s lagoon. Into the part-time sink hole. If it wasn’t for Livia, rummaging around in the box of broken biscuits …
The last conference we’d paid to come to. Our last hope. With our last money. Where we couldn’t afford the conference dinner. The conference drinks. Where we’d booked only the shittiest rooms. The earliest morning talk slots.
The last conference! With our last desperation. Hauling ourselves with the last strength we could muster. For one last chance. One last round. One last attempt to get our names known! To try and find our way onto an interview list. Or to break open a new seam of part time work, at least.
Ah, but we gave up, soon enough. We crashed and burned, soon enough.
Sure, we met each other. Sure, we found one another. At the bottom of the pit! Of the same funnel. We found ourselves in company. So called company. We’d stopped just dying for a moment. Pressed pause on the suicidal ideation, for a time at least.
And there was Livia, come to save us.
Had Livia not decided to back the losers. Had Livia not gone fishing in part time waters to see what she’d pull up. In our cess pit! Our dead pool!
Had Livia not gone prospecting at dodgy conferences. Had she not repeatedly asked for advice about who she’d hire and then proceed in the opposite direction. Had she not approached the ones she’d been warned against. Not the academic stars, but the academic losers …
She wanted lecturers who wouldn’t just fly the coop. Who wouldn’t simply get jobs elsewhere. She wanted people who’d stick around. Who’d be malleable, a little. She wanted lecturers who’d be grateful for the chance. Who’d be happy to be have been given a job. An opportunity.
And she landed her fish. We were flopping around on her deck.
Work in Progress 