Work in Progress

We grow old during the academic year. We grow ancient. And then we need to be grow young again, at the end of the academic year.

Then we need to find it again, our innocence. The Promise.

 

We need to die down, at the end of the academic year. We need to lie fallow. We need Time. We need to go larval. We need slow incubation.

Summer is a dreaming. A recovery. Summer is contemplation: a preparatory state. An attempt to re-enter the Origin.

 

Thoughts will rise from the summer earth. Thoughts incubated there. Thoughts waiting for us, until the end of the academic year.

 

Wasting time – it’s important. Squandering it. Cycling out. Drinking … without aim. Without expectation. This is not about a project. It’s not about our future, out writing.

It’s about achieving stupidity. Finding it. Attaining it. Sinking to its level. Falling to it. Failing to it. Letting ourselves be sucked down.

 

Incremental becoming. The nutrients of study.

Dream of the coming summer. What we’d Do, in the summer. What we’d do with the summer.

To reclaim it – our potentiality. Our youth! Our faith! To take it back from everything that would put it to work.

Our perpetual beginning, forever ahead of us. Our hidden childhood. The spring. The Originary. That hadn’t been crushed in us. That had been lost in us. That could still breathe in us.

Wasn’t that what we always sought, with our dreams of summer? Wasn’t it that with which summer work would reunite us?

 

Possibility: that was to be our element. Potentiality – that’s what we were to experience.

We’d be brought back to ourselves. Given ourselves – all over again.

 

The summer in us. Our summer.

The perfect coincidence of ourselves and the Origin. And the Beginning. And the Inexhaustible.

What we’d Do, at last. What was to come. What Opened.

 

Wasn’t that why we wrote: to experience it, potentiality? To return to it: the beginning, upstream of everything?

To coincide with at last. To find your way back to it at last.

 

That’s the other summer, the impossible summer, where you’d find your way back. Where you’d contemplate your way to the Origin.

The summer you’d never reach. The summer you’d disappoint. The summer that was the promise of writing. The promise to recover what was lost at the beginning. In the Division from the beginning.

 

So lay your head on the summer earth. Lay it on the summer sand. Rest your head.

Forget your thoughts, so you can remember them again. Forget your Philosophy, so you can return to it again.

 

If you fell asleep in the sun, what then? If you closed your eyes, of what would you dream? Where would your dreams lead you?

 

That’s how our stupidity would join hands with our genius. That’s how our idiocy would marry our brilliance.

No longer panic flight. No longer rush. No longer lost in this and that and this. No longer heart-tremors. No more panicked breaths.

Catching up with ourselves. Pausing. Taking account. Looking back through our notebooks. Resting. Consolidating. Pulling our thoughts together, such as they were.

Reviewing the thought-path we’d taken. Coming to ourselves.

We’d planted the seeds. Now was the time for the Harvest. All our work. Everything we’d written, or tried to write. The papers we’d published.

Now it was time to bring it all together. That was the groundwork, merely. (Sounds better in German: the Grundwerk.) Now it was time to see what we could Do. What would Open, if we were given time. How our work might blossom.

Now that there was light pouring into us. The warmth in us. No that we had time. Now that time was opening to us. Now we were included in time. In the timing of time. In summer time.

 

Six weeks, without mooring. Six weeks, into the open. Six weeks of summer voyage. Six weeks for the summer wind to catch our sails.

 

Summer languor. Summer luxuriance. A summer stretching of limbs.

 

Summer peace. Now we’re out of peril. Out of our mire. Now we’re uncrushed. Unbroken.

 

Summer thoughts – there are those. Summer ideas. That seem to float upward. That seem to rise into the sky, like fire balloons.

 

Sometimes becalmed. Sometimes, no wind, nothing happening. Sometimes, the desire to move forward, but no ability to move forward. Sometimes, days spiral into themselves, lost. Sometimes, days just falling into themselves. Collapsing into themselves.

Sometimes, a kind of summer introversion. No summer expansiveness. No summer extraversion. No summer openness. Sociability.

 

Summer, rising. Summer, buoyant. Rising higher than itself.

Summer, opening summer eyes. In us! In our writing!

 

Would it buoy us up, too? Would it carry us up with it? Would we stop our sinking? Would we free ourselves of solitude? A warm wind, across our bodies. A zephyr. What was happening? What was growing?

 

Sometimes, scarcely a direction to time. Time seemed to sink into itself. Time seemed to lie down. There were time pools. Time puddles. Sometimes, time seemed to catch a breeze.

 

Time, moving forward. Time, pressing into the future. Opening future for itself. But idly, not wilfully. Curiously, not wilfully.

 

Gesturing. Extending a hand. Testing. Seeing what it could become, the summer. How it could live in us. How it might work through us.

Work – unwork. Undo. Loosen. Let us go, in some sense. Set us free. Free ourselves into … what?

 

A summer dimension. A summer thickness. A summer cloying. A summer viscosity. Like honey.

Summer thick, like honey. Summer, runny, like honey. Summer you have to spoon out. That dripped slow drips. Rolling drips, down the jar of summer. Was that what we were to write with: summer honey?

 

Was there a special summer reward for us? Was there something being given to us, as a special summer favour?

The capacity to work. To believe ourselves to be working. A summer confidence. A summer swelling.

Belief in ourselves; was that it? In what we could do?

A summer pride. Was it real? Should it be? Should we feel that way?

Wasn’t it pretence? Wasn’t it obliviousness? Where was our sense of failure now?

Did we really believe that we wouldn’t fail? That summer wouldn’t wreck us?

Summer delusion: was that it? Summer pride before a summer fall ….

Summer made us believe we were geniuses: was that it? That we had summer haloes. That it would come together – everything we were. Everything we’d tried to think. That it would make sense at that moment: the meaning of our lives. The fruit of our lives.

The sense that there was something we were up to. That there was something about us worth attending to. Worth watching.

That we were up and comers. That we were people whose career was to be followed. That we were interesting in some way. Intriguing. That our thoughts were … new in some sense. That they hadn’t been thought before.

So that older philosophers could see our promise. So that we could sit with them at conferences as they bitched about everyone else. As they put down everyone else, witheringly. Wittily. As they made catty remarks about this or that speaker.

We were in the circle of intimates. We were deemed worthy enough to bitch in front of. To gossip before.

We were included. We weren’t targets of obvious contempt. Judgement was deferred. They looked upon us tolerantly, even a little warmly.

We’d earnt our place. We weren’t just no ones, no marks. We could even make a few catty remarks ourselves. To make them laugh, these older philosophers. These philosophers who’d done the rounds. Done all the big conferences. Who’d even hung out with the big names – the big European names. Who’d hung out with Zizek in the Alps. And Badiou on Malta …

 

We had the beginnings of a Reputation.

Players: that’s what we were. Taken half seriously. Given advice.

Thinkers of particular potential! Of special promise!

Because we weren’t part of the general magma. We weren’t run-of-the-mill types.

We were recognised as going to be around for some time. As worth getting to know, a little.

 

And didn’t we have glamour now, as full-time lecturers? Weren’t we were eligible, in the academic world at least?

We were taken seriously. We were players. Up-and-comers. Our speaking slots at conferences weren’t first thing in the morning. People would even come to our papers out of curiosity. What were these Newcastle people about? How come they were hired? Were picked out from all the other hopefuls? There must be something about them …

 

We were part of the continental philosophy scene. We weren’t ignorable. We weren’t just magma. We weren’t disposable. We weren’t there then gone, like so many other post-PhDs.

We weren’t passers through. We were fixtures, of a sort. We were going to be here for the long haul, or at least until our departments were closed down.

Which meant that we were worth getting to know. We might be needed as external examiners, or something. A PhD examiners. As external degree validators. As guest speakers, who knows? We might have something to say … And we couldn’t be worse than X, or Y …

Mutual advantage things. Player to player favours. Lecturer on lecturer boosterism. Wasn’t this how things were done?

 

We were going to be around for a while. There was some curiosity about us. What was happening up there at Newcastle? What was going on?

We weren’t just part of the crowd of post-PhDs, looking for work. Desperate for work.

We’d Made It in some sense. We had Status. We were In. We weren’t fly by nights.

We were part of the crowd. Worth getting to know. Maybe even worth taking seriously.

 

We had a glamour about us. People were curious. Who were we, anyway? What were we about? What were we working on? What were we Up To?

Worth having an affair with. Worth romancing, maybe. Worth entering into some Intrigue with.

 

Who knows what we’d do in the future. Could be asked to run a learned society. Become Treasurer of the British Society of Continental Philosophy. Join the Executive of Hermeneutica Scotia. Become the Secretary of the European Philosophy Circle.

We’d be part of the UK continental philosophy furniture – no question of that.

 

Our Rise. Our Ascent.

We were suddenly Attractive. Post PhDs approaching us. Wondering if we could offer them part-time work. Would there be an entry level jobs with us? Was Newcastle philosophy really expanding? Might there be an entry level job or two coming up?

We understood. We were once desperate. And pretty recently, too.

 

We’d be like them, the in-crowd. We were at home at conferences. Greeting friends at conferences. Greeted warmly.

 

Once you were in, you were in. Once you’d got your full time job, you were on the ascent, unless there was something really wrong with you. So longer as you published a few things. Gave a few papers. Your institutional standing would take care of itself. Your reputation, among your fellow lecturers … were you a bon vivant? Were they glad to run into you at conferences? Could you give a good paper?

 

Popular! Imagine that! We’d be popular! We’d be people to meet! From one of the power bases of European philosophy in the UK!

Eventually professors. Eventually, heads of department. Eventually, people of influence.

Eventually, heads of learned societies. Eventually. Editors of academic journals. Eventually, eminence grises.

Eventually, delivers of prestigious lecture series. Eventually, book series editors. Commissioners of books for book series. Contributors of essays to collections.

Reference-writers. People of influence. Promotion external assessors. Part of the European philosophers in the Anglophone world-machinery.

 

There must be something about us. We couldn’t be complete idiots. We were just fools. We’d made our way to lectureships – wasn’t that something? In this climate! In these times!

Lectureships in philosophy: gold-dust! How had we done it?

 

And what was happening in Newcastle, anyway? Everyone else, departments were closing, but in Newcastle?

 

So it wasn’t all disaster, after all. So it wasn’t just closure and ruination and devastation and Analytic hegemony. So the cause wasn’t quite lost. So Continental Philosophy wasn’t just fallen.

 

We were worth googling. Worth reading something by, so you could curry favour with us.

We were part of the scene. Postgrads told to cultivate us. Post PhDs … To get themselves known.

 

We’d be on the Inside. Recognised. Greeted. Nodded to. Waved at.

We’d become Known Quantities. Familiars.

We weren’t on the Outside anymore. We weren’t Ignorable. We were In, not Out.

Worth being nice to. Worth a Smile. Worth buttering-up after our papers (‘Very rich. Very interesting.’) Worth Flattering. Worth Cultivating. Worth Attending to in general. Worth sitting next to at conference meals.

Worth having a chat with. Worth spending half an hour with.

 

They’ll be attributing Cunning to us. Canniness. Player-ism. Careerism. They think we must be Clever. Just because we had a job. Just because we were gainfully employed. They’ll be deducing that we were Smart, after all. That we weren’t idiots, as we might have appeared. That we were in the Game, as they were. Where the stakes were Careers – proper careers.

That we were Going Somewhere. We weren’t on a hiding to nothing.

That they should Notice us. That we were worth Politeness. Even a kind of Respect for us.

 

Newcastle! A Russell Group university! Surprising. They didn’t expect that. The opening of a new philosophy department. A European one! How could that happen?

 

We were going to be People of Influence. We were to be Cultivated. Greeted.

 

And now we were part of it, the Anglophone Continental Philosophy machine. The European philosophy in the UK operation.

Now we might be Invited to give a talk at this department or that. Or to continue an essay to this special edition of a journal or that. We might be invited to another conference to speak.

 

There was even a kind of mystique about us. The Newcastle people. The European philosophers of Newcastle.

 

Newcastle!? Our university was ranked much higher than theirs. Our university had much more of a reputation!

 

They were shaking our hands – people we used to look up. People who’d spoken as keynote speakers when we were postgraduates at our first conference.

 

We were of the Establishment.

Busy with our projects – with what we might realise, might do.

Leave us alone. Let us see what we can do. What we might write. What we can think. How clever we can be. Give us a chance …

 

We’re in the chrysalis – the scholarly chrysalis. We’re busy transforming. Seeing who we can be, if given the chance. Testing our potential – to see whether we really have potential.

 

Leave us to do our thing, to do our work, to get on with stuff. Leave us to find out who we are as thinkers. Who we could be as philosophers. As philosophical anthropologists (Sophia.) As theologians (Io.) As writers! As literaro-philosophers (me.)

 

We’re all tribute acts, and not just you, Helmut.

 

Let us imitate the European greats, and learn through imitation. Let us busy ourselves with our tribute acts to Levinas and Blanchot and the rest. Let us try to write with flair.

 

We can still indulge all our fantasies of being thinkers of promise. Young academics to watch.

We haven’t run up against our limits yet – not really. We don’t know who we can’t be – not yet. Not really.

We talk a lot about our idiocy, but do we really know our idiocy? Have we really experienced our idiocy?

 

Would we able to make the transition, post PhD? Who might we become? Would we reveal a secret genius, furled until now?

If we work hard enough. If we keep our heads down for the summer. If we keep going, day after day.

 

Couldn’t we will ourselves to greatness? Just us and our books. At our laptops, tip-tapping our way to greatness.

Were we late developers, after all? Would we come into ourselves? Do the foundational work for our future careers.

 

Intensity. Focus. We were not to be idiot professors, focusing on this and then that. On this thinker, or that one.

We were to drive ourselves through the days and nights. Find ideas to live or die for – was that it? To develop … intuitions. Thoughts. In a British context! Here – in our benighted country. Thoughts, native to our country. That arse from the benightedness …

 

Weren’t we looking for a politics? And what political philosophy did we want to develop?

Was it Marxism, or something? Were we left wing, after all, after all the tyranny? Should we read the rightists?

Was there anything left in Marxism? Something no one had noticed? Something no one had noticed before? What about the Frankfurt School? Is there some corner of Frankfurt School thought that no one’s done anything with? What about the Italian automonists? The operarismo types? What about the Invisible Committee? Or the Anonymous Committee, or whatever they want to call themselves? Or some other group of radicals?

Maybe we should be the radicals. Maybe we’ll be the new political thinkers.

Do we have any political-philosophical ideas? Feelings? What do we have to work with?

 

We’re waiting for idea. We’re looking to discover our Idea. That would be all our own. That would give our thought an individual physiognomy. That would be all about us.

The sense that we were thinking something worthwhile. That only we could think! That only someone with our particular … histories. Backgrounds. Idiocies …

That only we could think, we idiots. We stupidismos …

Idiot summer. The summer when idiocy could breathe out. Be what it was. Stop pretending.

When we no longer tried to escape our stupidity. When we accepted it. Merged with it. Became one with it.

 

Stupidity summer. When summer was a diving bell. When you could sink into your idiocy. Explore it. Discover its depths.

 

Stunned summer, like a blow to the head. Summer stunned, reeling, staggering all around us. And we were staggering, too.

 

Our stupidity, joining the great stupidity. Our idiocy, joining the cosmic idiocy. The idiotic Creation.

And isn’t God an idiot, too? Wasn’t God always an idiot? Didn’t God sing his idiot’s song?

 

And we were being paid. We were being paid for this. Money credited into our accounts for this. Monthly salary payments for this.

 

Summer was working through us. Summer was thinking. Summer, reading. Philosophising. In us and through us.

 

Books whose pages turned in the sun. Books, left in fields. Books, lying open. Books, abandoned. Being read by the sky.

 

Trust in summer. That summer was Eternal. That summer would be there tomorrow. That the weeks would turn in summer. That weeks would pass in summer.

How many weeks before the start of the term? Before the start of the new academic year? Infinite weeks.

 

Weeks and weeks in the eternal. Weeks squared in the eternal. Turning there. Kept by the eternal. Held by the eternal. In eternity’s rhythm.

 

Summer strength. Summer weakness. Lying back into summer. Lying back, beneath the summer. Under it.

 

Summer passing over us.  Vast summer skies. Vast clouds. That we could watch from our offices, our summer offices.

 

No one knocking on our office doors. No one calling for us. No one on the phone.

No meetings in our schedules. Rare emails. Just from subscriptions. Just from jobs.ac.uk. Just from Philos-l. No urgent academic matters to attend to.

 

Time – the gift of time. Time’s timing. Time’s whiling. The turning of time.

 

Wanderings. Trips to Marks and Spencers, for lunch. Trips to Beatdown Records, to browse LPs.

Gaps – but part of study, the rhythm of study. Trips out, but trips that would bring us back to study. Refreshed for study.

 

And didn’t we even go to the beach? Didn’t we even walk on Longsands. Walk at Blyth. Walk at Seaton Sluice. That was part of work. That respired in work. Afternoons, but part of work.

And evenings? To the Ouseburn Valley? To catch a film at the Star and Shadow? Evenings, but back by eleven. Back in bed. So we could be up at six, and ready for work.

 

And weren’t we ready for summer intrigues? For summer romance? For adventures in summer, now we were all wearing less?

Our first summer, after the Board of Examiners. After the last Board of Studies. After graduation.

The summer, opening out. The summer, wide.

Like the summers of our PhD years. Like the summers of our distant childhoods.

The limitless. The Open. The infinite reach of summer.

 

Setting sail – when you can’t see the other shore.

 

Freed into summer. Given over to it. To summer. To the summer process.

 

Summer weeks, in the infinite. When the campus had died down. Except for foreign students. Come for academic English study courses.

 

Writing under the summer vault. In the summer halls.

Hatching into summer.

 

Summer writing. Summer in our sentences. Summer air in our prose.

 

The great rhythm of the academic year. It’s great turning, the academic year. Around the summer – around the fulcrum of summer.

 

The summer orbit of academia. The revolution around summer – the infinite expanse of summer.

 

Summer writing time. Summer reading time.

What was our reading project this year? Aristotle’s Metaphysics, in the original? Science of Logic, in the original? The complete Aquinas – the fucking lot – in the original? The entirety of Kierkegaard, the whole oeuvre, and learning Danish to read it along the way?

 

Summer ambition. Summer scale.

Chocs away, into summer skies.

Who did we imagine we’d be? What did we imagine we’d do this summer?

What was this summer’s need? This summer’s project?

What voyage would we take into the history of philosophy? Into the really hard stuff we never would have read otherwise? For which we’d never have the time.

Think big, we told ourselves! Think oeuvres! Think collected works! Think new languages!

 

Taking summer flight, borne up by summer wings.

 

In our summer offices. Fans blowing air, moving drowsily from side to side, in our offices.

 

The near-empty campus. The older lecturers – the old professors and the like – gone overseas for summer. Gone on holiday! Gone to conferences! Gone to holiday lets! Gone to gites, God knows. Gone to summer somewhere European.

And as happy just to be. Happy with campus peace. With the summer trance.

To work. To write: wasn’t that the ambition? Wasn’t that what we were about?

 

What language were we going to learn, this summer? Was this Danish summer (for Kierkegaard)? Should we learn Italian? What about Latin. Latin must be a good one.

 

Summer pacing. Summer cam. The summer measure, weeks going by. Blown like dandelion seeds by summer.

 

Summer of potential. Dreaming of what we could write. Of what we might read. Everything in the conditional. If only, if only.

 

Inexhaustible summer. That we’ll never be able to use up.

The summer condition. Summer without beginning and without end.

 

Work, yes, but souffle-light. Summer light. Work – but work with air inside it, like kneaded bread.

 

Work – but not focus. Work – but nothing productive.

Idled work. Work without work – that was more of a non-working than work.

Worklessness – but actively so – joyfully so.

Idling in work. As work. Unfolding work into the sky. Letting work blossom.

 

Non-work, where the non- was not privative. Where the non- was a shattering-open.

 

The song of work. What work always wanted to be. A giving up of work in work. A relinquishment. A laying down of tools, but in work.

Non work, that says, nothing will happen again. That says happening does not happen. Non-working that says, give it up – give everything up. But does so in work, and as work.

 

Work – rather, the contemplation of work. Work as contemplation – as detached from work, fallen out of step with it – and with everything.

 

Time outside time – summer outside summer. The eternal promise of summer that never arrives and never could arrive. That never begins, but is there nonetheless.

The unreal summer. Drowsy. Heavy Turgid. As though underwater. Summer through which we swim.

 

Heavy days. Humid days. Threatening to gather in a final thunderstorm. To gather up in a cloudburst.

Unstable summer. Menacing summer. Was it from these summer clouds from which lightning will come?

 

Summer slipped out of phase. Summer escaped from summer. On another track. Summer sidelined, Summer shunted.

 

Summer curtains in the breeze. The summer culmination. Summer billowing.

 

The brow of summer.

 

Turbulent summer. Turbid summer. Summer that seeks release. That seeks cloud burst. Cumuli-nimbus stacked kilometres high. Towering. Greying. Full of rain. Gravid with lightning.

 

The other summer, like Blanchot’s other night.

 

To have time – the gift of time. The openness of time. The cry of time.

 

The summer of study. When study respires. Where stupidity breathes.

 

The summer of summer. The ultimate summer. Summer squeezed into a glass.

The great postgraduate song of yearning. The great postgraduate plaintiveness. The song of no prospects. Of no future. Of massive debt. Of maladjustment.

The song of overeducation. Of surplus intellectuals! The postgraduate song for Europe – for European philosophy.

 

There are too many of them. The dangerous class – the postgraduate class. An intelligentsia with nothing to do but foment revolution.

Your Heidegger tribute act. Your trad Heideggerian bullshit. 

 

Helmut’s battle against, like, the whole of technology.  One man, armed only with Heidegger books. In translation.

 

What’s Organisational Management all about, Helmut? The essence of Organisational Management is … What's the answer, Helmut?

 

Good thing you started growing your Dostoevsky beard, Helmut. That’ll keep you warm.

 

How are Schubert’s greatest hits? Do they drown out the vulgarity?

 

Helmut, singing Schubert, learnt phonetically, by heart.

I’m a fuck up, philosopher. I’m a bad robot. I couldn’t say what the wanted me to say. The way I was supposed to say it. My programming failed. I had to be repaired.

 

Do we have souls, philosopher? Is this what the soul is? Is this how it cries, the soul? Is this how it opens upwards? Outwards, the soul?

 

I want to play truant for the rest of my life.

 

Does my madness make me a philosopher?

Philosophical, maybe.

 

It’s like Organisational Management is falling apart in me.

 

Your very presence is licensing this. Making me say these things. Why is it one way, philosopher? Why can’t you say organisational things? Or managerial things?

 

Do you think everyone feels like this, or is it just us? Are we, like, the last existentialists?

 

I think I’m malfunctioning. I think I must be a bad robot.