Work in Progress

What does the earth want? What does the earth shelter? Does the earth know how fallen it is? Does the earth know its sunkenness?

What words would the earth say? What would it whisper to us? Would it speak of its pain? Of the things lain on top of it? Of the things crushing it? Of Organisational Management’s towers? Of Organisational Management’s campus? Of Organisational Management’s pavement?

 

The earth stays in its hiddenness. The earth reveals nothing but its hiddenness. Its concealedess.

The absent earth? The present-in-absence earth. The hidden-in-light earth. The sinking-back-into-darkness earth. The falling-into-forgetting earth. It will not be revealed. It will not come to the light.

 

What kinds of words are the earth’s? A rumbling beneath words. A echoing through them. A doubling up, like dub.

 

This heaviness. This pressure of earth. Its density.

 

Its secret. Its hiddenness. Its retreat. This is what Organisational Management doesn’t know. It’s what Organisational Management can’t command. Can’t organise or manage.

The shifting earth – horrible, exquisite.  

 

The earth cannot be harmonised. Or synchronised. Cannot be tamed. Cannot be dominated.

 

The oldest words belong to the earth. The oldest unwords. The undoing of words, before there were any words.

 

The boulder clay is the earth that will cause the towers to topple. That will overwhelm the Organisational Management world. The Newcastle earth is what will do it. And if not this earth, then a golem made from this earth. Like, zombies made with clay, with only one thing on their mind: destruction of Organisational Management.

 

Does mud ever really do stuff? Does it really struggle against the world? Is there really a rift beneath this campus? Is there a subterranean struggle? A secret polemics of earth and world?

 

A river of mud. A sea of mud, with its own currents. That isn’t just crushed by the buildings above. That pushes back. That struggles, in its own way. That doesn’t just take it all lying down.

 

Only sludge can save us now, right? Rebellious sludge. Rising-against-the-technoworld sludge.

It’s a shell. It’s a ruin. The shell of our hopes. Where our hopes went to die.

 

Cracks in the concrete. Dripping. What did this?

 

When did it happen? When was it all exploded?

 

It’s blasted. It’s burnt out. No one could live here now.

 

Who fire-bombed this place?

 

I can’t believe we missed it all. Why are we always too late for everything?

Scorched. Blown out. It all went ka-boom down here, and a while back.

 

Like there was a police raid. A counter-terrorism raid. They decided to blow it all out.

 

They did it to depress us. To spite us. They wanted to destroy our hope. Why are they so cruel?

Because they’re cruel. To demonstrate their cruelty. To flex their cruelty muscles, or whatever. They do what they do. They follow their logic.

 

We don’t know it’s them.

Who else could it have been?

The Bug.

Who is the Bug anyway?

There might have been a Bug-based civil war among the paragraduates.

 

Their ruined experiment. It’s a desolation. A mockery.

Their enemy found them.

 

Why would Organisational Management bother with some rogue philosophy types?

 

And what happened to the paragraduates? Did they go deeper underground? Is there any deeper underground? Did they jump into the Abgrund? Into the crack of doom, or whatever?

 

The paragraduates escaped. They go amongst us now. They became surface dwellers again. Infiltrating the university. Taking lowly jobs of various kinds. As janitors. Doing admin. All around us.

They have ways of hiding in plain sight. That they haven’t been destroyed.

What about their eyes? Black in black … won’t that give them away?

Contacts, maybe.

 

Maybe the paragraduates did it because they knew they’d get caught. They wanted to destroy all trace of themselves.

 

They bombed it themselves. To destroy the evidence. The evidence that could indict them.

 

If they could destroy this, couldn’t they blow up the whole campus?

 

I see our future. We can come down here. And – And what? I don’t know. Spend time. Sit things out.

Things will come to find us. And fuck with us. We won’t be left alone. No one’s left alone anymore. It’s the clear and hold op. Crushing internal resistance.

Like anyone could be bothered. Like we could be a fucking danger.

 

I’m disappointed there’s no golem.

Perhaps they took it with them.

We should make our own.

We’ve got our own  Helmut. Our Heideggerian golem. Made out of authentic Geordie boulder clay. With entchllessenehti written on his forehead. Wor golem, as the Geordies would say.

Angels are terrifying, did you know that? They look terrifying. That’s what the always say when they appear in the Bible: fear not. Do not be afraid. Because their aspect is one of terror. It must be.

Because they do not come from this world. They can only appear in this world as its opposite. They show us the corruption of the earth inversely. The angel is the Refutation. Is the Opposite.

The angel is hatred. We can only see it a its opposite. We can only see love as hatred. Joy as despair. Lightning must rend this world Must split it in two. This must not be our world. This cannot be our joy.

 

The angel is death. The angel comes as death. The angel comes as the End. And we must not be afraid.

All the signs point there – to the end. That’s why angels are terrifying. Because they are death.

 

Angels come announcing the end. To the chosen ones. To the special ones. To comfort them. To say, death is the Law. And must be the law.

 

God isn’t dead. God is death: do you understand that?

Death is searching for you. God is searching for you. They’re the same thing.

This is not our Earth. It was not made or us. It’s not ours, nor can it be. It’s not for us.

We’re supposed to hate it. We’re supposed to hate this.

This is not our world. If we don’t know it as filth, then … If we don’t hate it – all of it – in every detail, then …

 

It’s absolutely wrong, this world. It’s what we should not want. It must be what we cannot want. We must not want this. We must hate it.

Filth: that’s what we must see in it – all of it. There must be no day that passes without hatred.

 

This is not our world: we must know that. We must be nothing other than this knowledge. Which should be heavy in us. Which should crush us.

 

We cannot let ourselves succeed in this world. Success in this world is filth.

 

There is nothing divine about the world. it’s the opposite of the divine. It’s hatred. Which must mean self-hatred.

 

The Creation is not a creation. It’s an … abortion. This world in its entirety, is ruled by Satan. It’s Satan’s world, or God’s world.

 

See through it all. See through the illusions. She beyond this world. There is nothing you want here.

 

The devastation: begin from that. The damnation. The horror: remember that. World horror.

 

You have to live in opposition to this. You have to live against it. Failure is success. Stupidity is brilliance. Death is life. Despair is joy.

 

There is a sickness. There is a poison. There are falsehoods. And deliberate lies.

 

You have to say, I can no longer live like this. I can’t live this life. You have to say, I’m disgusted by this life. And by myself, living this life.

You have to say, This is not life. This is not what life should be. You have to say, This is not how I should live.

 

You have to say, This is poison. There is poison everywhere. You have to reach absolute despair. You have to reach a perfect despair.

 

You have to know despair as too much. As stifling. As strangulation. It’s truth – to be strangled by this world. it’s how things are.

 

You have to say I want to throw up all the poison. I want it out of me. Out of my bloodstream. You have to say, They poisoned me and I want the poison out. And the go on poisoning us. Poison rains down from the sky.

 

I don’t want to hear that the world is good. That there are good things in the world. I don’t want to hear that not everything is wicked. And corrupt. I don’t want to hear that it isn’t all poisoned.

We have to live against this. We have to leave this. This is not our world.

 

Abominations: that’s what we’ve been made to become. But abomination: is all I see around us. I see what should not be. I see what should be hated. I see foul growth. And multiplication. I see the spreading of disease. I see the different forms of poison.

 

I think what disgusts me about me is about the world. The world in me.

And sometimes I think to myself: we will never die. And I don’t know what that means.

 

Anything good and pure and innocent must be perverted. Must be twisted.

 

Abomination: is the most terrifying word. But it is the right word. We are in Hell. This is already Hell.

We’re not part of it. We don’t belong to your world. We live in isolation. We’ve opted out. We’ve gone away. We’ve sidestepped the evil.

 

I can’t give you reasons … justifications. I can’t explain.

What you see around you. It should be clear. What we are – or are not. What we honour.

 

I don’t know how many of us there are. I don’t count. I think it’s good to forget how to count, don’t you? I think it’s good to forget.

 

You’ll think we’ve gone mad. And perhaps we are mad. But it’s a benign madness. A calm madness. A giving madness.

 

Something hovers here. Something we hold between us. We don’t know what it is. We don’t know anything.

It doesn’t want to be revealed. It doesn’t want to be here. And that’s how it shows itself: by hiding. That’s how it reveals itself – by not revealing itself.

 

A sound. Sounds. Like the buzzing of insects. That’s what we hear. A distant rumbling. Like faraway thunder. Like some earthquake, far far away.

 

I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m not a philosopher anymore, if I ever was.

 

I can’t stand the light. We can’t stand it. The way everything is shown, and nothing hidden. The way there are no secrets. It’s what makes us live in secret. There are things that must be hidden. Underground.

 

You’ve kept all these people locked up here for so long. Underground. Like some md cult.

They are free to come and go.

But they don’t go, do they? They’re like an enclosed order of nuns. Or monks.

They’re so pale. You’re pale.

 

If I was up there, I’d just shuffle through the world. I’m old now, don’t you see? People would think I was mad. And perhaps I am.

 

I think I’m broken. I think I’ve been broken. I think I’ve suffered. But I’m not mad. I have faith. But I think we don’t know what madness is. I think I’m loser to the truth. The truth of madness. A mad truth.

 

Perhaps we have saved ourselves. Perhaps we should try and save the world, too. The borders shouldn’t have to be maintained: that’s what I tell myself. Between … dream and reality. The idea and the real. Not that simple.

Perhaps  I was selfish before, trying only to save the postgraduates. Leaving the world to burn. This time, everyone must be saved: that’s what I tell myself. The whole world. I don’t know if I believe it.

Sometimes I say to myself: The gate must be opened. There should be no distinction between what lies below and what is above. The frontiers must be abolished.

Sometimes I say: There must be a new pact with the world. A new covenant. The seasons will be inverted. It must be sunny at night and snowy in August. Great things must end and small things endure.

 

We will never die, just as we will never have lived. We’re not in this world. We’re not part of it. We don’t know how to be.

 

We don’t want the world. Not anymore. We live in isolation. We’re not people who should be alive. We’re aberrations. We’re not part of it.

Nimrod: Here in the depths, things become clearer. At the roots of the city. You can see things.

What do you see?

 

We were the original European department. Rivals to Warwick and Essex, back in the day. Before we were crushed. What matter?

And you are our successors.

 

And Cicero – we were intrigued by Cicero.

You knew her?

Oh, we met Cicero. I don’t think she knew who she was meeting. Tell me: why did she do it – refound philosophy? Reopen the department?

To save her own skin. Her department was closing. She didn’t want to retire quite yet. Not in her fifties.

That’s not the explanation.

 

We lost our souls in the’80s. With the reform of higher education. With marketisation. With managerialism. The university died. The sector died. Philosophy died, which meant the humanities died. Which meant the university died.  

That’s a very lofty view of philosophy. And of the humanities.

Philosophy was the heart. The heart of it all.

 

What about the new campus? The O.M. campus?

Up there? That’s just a completion of what was there before. It’s more of the same. The enframing – that’s what Heidegger calls it, right? Gestell, which is untranslatable. It’s showing itself now – explicitly. It’s revealed. Without shadow. Without darkness.

That’s what we’re about down here: remembering the shadow and the darkness. Remembering what hides itself.

 

We work, it’s true, but we don’t really concentrate. We read, but we don’t focus. We sleep-read, really. We dream-read. If we take notes … they’re disconnected. None of us are sure what we add up to.

 

So you see, visitors, we’re no good for anything. We can’t organise a revolution. We can’t rise up. We can’t explode the towers.

Do you know someone who can?

What makes you ask that? Do you have friends in high places? Or low places. We heard you were building a golem. Or awakening it.

The golem …

 

What about the Bug?

The Bug … It’s true that some of the meditators around here have made contact … with other dimensions. But no one’s sure what the Bug can do. The Bug always seems so … irritable. I don’t think the Bug wants to help anyone. The Bug just wants to be left alone, I think.

But you – you could help us, Nimrod.

Fiver could help us. Come with us.

What’s Fiver’s role?

To remember everything.

Will that help?

I don’t know.

 

We don’t have souls. We don’t have souls anymore. They’ve deprived us of souls. I don’t even know what a soul is. Do you?

Where we had souls, there’s a gap. An ache. A Desire. Unless that is your soul – that longing for a soul. That yearning.

 

They made us hollow? They emptied us out? How did they do that? know only what we’re not. What we do not have.

 

We’re lost. We’re fallen. We have no soul.

 

Do you know what philosophy is: a way of talking about ghosts. And of talking about ourselves as ghosts.

It’s about our absence from ourselves. It’s about what we’re not, and cannot be. It’s about how we lost our souls.

 

We may be dead. But we’re not entirely numb. Rigor mortis hasn’t quite set in.

 

So we’ve devised a ceremony. We’ve synthesised a drug. To recover our memories. Our souls, maybe.

This is an adventure. Things are really happening. I thought adventures weren’t possible anymore.

 

The walls are brown with damp. An occupational hazard. Everything’s damp down here. There’s fungus everywhere.

Isn’t it bad for you?

You have to expand your notion of health.

I think they breathe through their skins. Or they’re training themselves to.

 

Don’t you understand the calibre of these people? These are not ordinary people. They’re not postgraduates – not anymore. They’ve freed themselves from that. From the university. From institutionalised education.

 

This is lower education – this is underground education. It’s an anti-university.

 

The antechamber. A gesture for us to sit.

Someone will come up and get us. Why are they making us wait. They want us to become acclimatised. Tuned in. Get calm. For our heartbeats to drop.

 

Like, vintage stuff. From World War II

It was an air raid shelter. We’re sitting in an air raid shelter.

 

Are we being watched?

Of course we are.

Assessed?

I'd say so.

 

Sound of footsteps from the other side of the door.

The door, sliding open.

A cowled figure. A woman, face hidden. Ushering us in.

 

A guide, walking ahead of us. Hooded. Quiet.

Where are we supposed to be going again?

Underground.

Why are we supposed to be going there?

We’re trying to win the trogs over to our cause. To find allies.

Did these guys actually invite us, or are we intruding?

Sophia mad contact, didn’t you?

No exactly. But I think we’ll be welcome.

We’ll blame you if it all goes wrong.

What are we going to tell them? What’s our story?

Just be honest. They prize honesty. And they’re very good at detecting lies. They’re very authentic. Very themselves.

How come you know so much about them? How did you win their trust?

I bring them news. Tell them things. They like to hear about the outside world.

This is just some philosophical anthropology gig. For your philosophical-anthropological fieldwork.

 

They have their own culture. Their own way of doing things. That’s what happens when you’re underground for nigh on thirty years.

How exotic. What an adventure.

 

Are there rats? Are there creepy-crawlies? I’m easily disgusted. Are there earthworms? I have a particular horror of earthworms.

 

There are tunnels like this in other places, too?

I think so … under other universities.

 

They don’t think they’re going to be here forever. This is a staging post, that’s all.

So where are they going to go?

Further underground, maybe.

There’s further underground?

There are levels and levels.

 

They think we’re all doomed. We up-siders. Surface dwellers.

 

Nimrod … I don’t know the details. I’ve never met him, not really. But he’s their leader. As good as. Their subcommander – that’s what he calls himself.

They’re like the Invisible Committee, only more so. An underground philosophy commune.

 

Some of them live here, others come here. This is their base.

How long’s it been since they went underground?

Thirty years or so, some of them.

 

They have no documentation, no IDs.

What do they live on?

The fungi they grow down here, I think.

What do they do for sunlight?

No one’s stopping them coming to the surface. But the really hardcore ones never do.

 

This is a way of life. There’s a whole culture. A tradition.

They must have electricity.

They take what they need for the grid.

What about water?

They’ve rerouted the pipes. They’re smart.

 

Helmut, you’d be right at home here. Why don’t you ask to join?

 

The higher cells are for the more superficial subjects. The deeper ones for the more fundamental ones. And they go pretty fucking deep.

It's a lot easier to educate a smart dog than a dumb dog. They want to educate us into trainability. And they’ve succeeded.

Not in our case.

Because we’re dumb dogs, idiot.