Work in Progress

Shutdown, that’s what we want. The final final. Credits rolling, or whatever. The end, in big capitals. Fin, like the end of a Godard film.

This is our coming of age. See, you can’t be not yet philosophers when you’re thirty-five. Thirty-five, you’ve got to look at yourself in the mirror. And what do you see?

 

You can’t rely on pure philosophical ardency anymore. Pure philosophical intensity can only sustain you for so long. You have to actually deliver. Write something good. Think something hard.

 

Our coming of age when we finally realise, we actually realise, that we’re shit. But will we accept it. We’ll struggle against it. That’ll be our lives, that struggle. That thrashing on the line. That dirty protest. Soiling every page we write. And every page we read, probably. And soiling the world by our very presence.

Pet humanities. Museum humanities. Cabinet of curiosities humanities. A humanities zoo. Decorative, more than anything.

 

A few humanities specimens, just for interest. A few of us, doing your humanities thing. Doing our arts stuff. They should be able to watch us all at work, through a glass panel.

 

The humanities in the era of their decline. Philosophy in the period of its obsolescence. A last gasp. A final efflorescence in the final hours before it collapses into nothing.

 

Decline theory. Obsolescence theory. How to think your own unimportance.

 

The humanities are nothing more than hobbies. Ways to amuse yourself when you’re not busy with something more important.

 

The humanities, in a time when their cultural capital is no more. When you don’t have to know things about opera to impress at the dinner party.

 

The humanities, going for a song. No one wants the humanities. They’re losing money per student head.

 

The cultural capital’s gone. The prestige that the humanities used to have. Which business studies so signally lack … But that it doesn’t care that it lacks.

 

It’s all business now. No more high humanities. They’re a fucking liability. Everyone wants rid of them.

 

They’ll pare down the humanities. To a single humanities degree – the liberal arts. Any ol’ shit studies.

 

They’ll have a humanities optional module or two that you can do as part of your O.M .degree – which will be the only degree you can do. A sampler of history and music and history of art and literature. Just to get the idea. Just to familiarise yourself with some old names. Just to have something to say on your CV. To talk about at interview. A humanities hobby or two!

 

They’ll keep a humanities type or two around as a curio – like a folly on an old country estate. Like an eccentric hermit.

If you’re so ordinary, how come you say these things?

I was programmed to ensnare doomy European philosophers. To be intriguing.

 

I see it now: you’ve honey-trapped me. To give up Organisational Management secrets. So you can exploit O.M. vulnerabilities.

 

Do you want to defect to the humanities?

Maybe.

 

Organisational Management is assuming the same position across all the unis. It’s ready. Primed. To unleash whatever it is. To open fire.

 

Maybe it turns me on to bridle philosophy. To see you cowed. Maybe that’s how I’ll get my thrills, seeing you accept the O.M .yoke. To be brought into the O.M. family, broken.

Castrated philosophy, right? Neutered philosophy. Ennuch philosophy, on a leash.

 

Where’s the heart of the death star?

Where are the vulnerabilities?

 

Couldn’t we use the Pulse? To conjure up something. As a portal. To bring something across from Hell. Something evil that we’d keep on our leash.

You can’t keep evil on a leash.

 

It’s a spiritual battle. So we need spiritual weaponry and spiritual armour.

Shiva, in the comics, used to turn himself into a right badass.

 

Does a lie want to lie? Does evil want to do evil?

It’s a beautiful day, Shiva. What are we supposed to do with a beautiful day? That just makes it worse, doesn’t it? We should be sailing or something. Or having lunch with our friends. Or taking a walk.

We are talking a walk.

It’s a work break. Talking about work. About how we should work harder. We should be being romantic with someone … Taking the air with our lover or something …

 

It’s just the usual self-sabotage, isn’t it. Doesn’t it get boring, being ourselves? God, is this really what life us?

At least we get to complain about life. At least we get to kvetch philosophically about the terms and conditions of life.

Is kvetching about life, life?

 

It’s been said so many times. It’s been done so many times. When does it just stop, anyway? When can you stop typing. When  is enough actually enough.

All the pages I’ve already violated. All the writing I can’t undo. Haven’t I already made enough mess? Why couldn’t someone have told me, You’re no good at this. Why couldn’t I have told yourself?

I thought I had potential, or something. I thought I might improve, or something. And now there’s nothing we can do. No way we can escape. Except destruction. Self destruction. Except killing ourselves, so we wouldn’t have to face it anymore. The humiliations visited upon us. That we visit upon ourselves.

Suicide … maybe … but we’d botch that up, too.

 

Why did no one tell me I had no potential? Self belief should be crushed. We should know our place – really know it. It would save us from so much. We should know our own idiocy. Actually KNOW it. Get a face tat, written in backwards writing on your forehead. YOU’RE STUPID. Just to remind you.

 

I need a lobotomy. I identify as something without any self-consciousness. A stone. I’d lie to be a stone. Just lying there. Thinking of nothing. Not even not even thinking, or not yet thinking.

Don’t you think there are more important things than all this … philosophy or literature?

Do you?

How about … romance?

Romance!?

Is romance real? Does romance happen? Can there be romance? For the likes of us?

For the likes of you, maybe.

Can romance ever trump … writing … and reading? And dreaming that you’re a genius …

 

This could be a beautiful day, of we could ever manage to live in it. The most beautiful day. If we could stop thinking about the so-called future. About realising our genius …

We need to get off the eschatological train – that’s how Agamben puts it. Dismount the eschatological push-bike.

 

Where do we think we’re going, with all our projects? Carried forward by … our desire for genius. Our will to realise … whatever it is.

Where will we be when you’re forty-five? Or, God knows, fifty-five? Where will we be then? What will you have achieved?

 

How would being a lover fit into your project?

It’s not a zero sum game. You can have both.

Can you?

 

You could be a genius lover.

Perhaps I could.

A brilliant of romance. Perhaps that’s where your true genius would lie: being a brilliant of romance. You’d actually be happy.

Fat chance.

 

Did you ever read those pages by Levinas on livre de, living from? We live from good soup, spectacles. Enjoyment is always about enjoying enjoyment, he says. About savouring it. He thought it all up in a prisoner of war camp, you know. Five years as a prisoner of war, in Nazi German. So he’s worth listening to. I’m never happier than reading those pages on enjoyment.

But what does that make me? An enjoyer of a philosophy of enjoyment. Of a philosophy of enjoying enjoyment. Which means I get to enjoy things third hand.

 

And what better feeling is there than writing, rushing along? Than being able to write. The most beautiful feeling in the world. Because it’s so rare, isn’t it?

You wait for days and days. You sit at night, just waiting. You get up in the morning, waiting. And days go by. And then, suddenly: it’s possible. Then the impossible happens.

 

I’d like to give it all up. I tried once – giving up writing, giving up reading. I went overseas. To begin a new life. Without all that literary stuff. Or the philosophical stuff. I didn’t last long.

 

We can’t bear the thought that we wasted our time. By studying. By reading. By taking notes. Writing them up, in solitude. When what would we have spent our time doing? What was better than reading and writing, or trying to write.

Have we been happy? Has there been happiness in our lives. I’ll answer: Yes there has. Unspeakable happiness. And so much of it. Who could understand our lonely happiness. The happiness of reading and writing, or trying to write.

 

We were able to read, and to write. We found the time to read and to write. We weren’t lost, so long as we had reading and writing.

Never mind the disaster. Never mind the endless end of the world.

Joy … secret joy. Unexplainable joy. Just like Wittgenstein said: tell them I had a wonderful life’. We’ve had wonderful lives, Shiva …

See, you’re doing it again: dreaming of finishing a book that would redeem it all. What sort of book would it be?

Which is quite clever, when you think of it. You’ve got

 

You want to sidestep everything. Clever. You want to swerve. From philosophy to literature. And then back to philosophy, maybe.

And what about you?

I’m sticking with philosophy.

That’s because you really might make it. You really might do something worthwhile. So you don’t need a literary fallback.

Is that what it is: a fallback?

 

Yeah, but I’ve got a way out.

Go on – share.

Writing about the failure of achieving anything. Writing about the great fuck up.

What, some sort of confession? Becoming some Augustine of failure?

A literary work. About fucking up philosophically.

Clever.

It wouldn’t actually be a work of genius. But it would be about dreaming of writing work of genius.

Cunning. A literary sidestep. A secret way to justify your life. A secret way of holding onto the idea of being a genius, even after the collapse in your belief in philosophical genius. A literary genius – is that what you dream of being?

Because in literary writing, you defeat would no longer be a defeat. If you write it up in the right way. If you turn it into some novel …

 

Your last belief, even after the collapse in your belief in philosophical genius, is your belief in your literary genius. That’s how you’re going to save the idea of yourself a genius from every defeat.

 

You were never really in philosophy, were you? You had an escape capsule all along: literature. You were never fully committed. You were always merely watching yourself philosophise, with a view to … writing it up.

You weren’t like us. You weren’t risking all. You were never really part of the philosophical crew. You weren’t just rolling your philosophical dice – you had literary ones, too.

The literary get-out. The literary alibi. Cunning. A genius move all by itself. But of course all that is dependent on the fact that you could achieve a literary success. Of you actually being able to write.

I’m working on that.

I mean, isn’t writing fiction as hard as writing philosophy? Who says that you’re actually any good at it? It’s a risk too, isn’t it: writing literature? You’re still rolling dice …

And it’s actually philosophical literature. Or philosophical literature.

So you’re going to have it both ways. Fail at philosophy, succeed at literature. And succeed in philosophy, too.

There are philosophical questions that can only be asked through literary writing.

Very 1950s. What are you, Blanchot 2.0.? Is this, like On the Way to Language, the reboot? Are you going to be a new Rilke? The difference between them and you is … absolute. They can actually write. To put it mildly. They’re actual geniuses. And you …

Ah, but I’m writing in a different time. I’m writing in a post-literary time. Where the prestige of literature has disappeared. You can’t do that high-falutin’ stuff anymore. You can’t write in a high literary register.

That’s how you’ll justify not being able to actually write. That’s how you’re going to do it. The ultimate excuse: these aren’t literary times, so I can’t be a literary genius …

They’re at a later stage than we are. They’ve passed through ambition and vanity and related stuff. They’re not like us. They’re liberated from wondering whether they’re geniuses or not. They don’t even need to be geniuses. Or to try and see whether they’re geniuses. None of that.

Even we’re ambitious, that’s the thing. Even we don’t want to be idiots. How do we free ourselves from that? We want to make it all worthwhile – all our studies. All those years – doing whatever it is we were doing. Reading and so on. So-called reading. Supposed reading …  

We want to make it worthwhile. To redeem ourselves by writing something – by putting it out there into the world. It isn’t enough for us, just studying, as it is for them. We’re too linear. Too focused on the future. On making good. On … getting our investment back, or whatever.

In the end, we want our share of glory – of academic glory. We want to become professors or something. Get personal chairs in tosser studies. Are we tossers? We are, aren’t we? We’re doing all this for some personal gain. We’re not pure enough.

Is that what you want to be, Shiva – pure?

 

It’s hard not actually having any talent … And it’s hard not actually being completely stupid. Just being mediocre. A bit lower than average.

But no academic thinks of themselves as being lower than average.

That’s what makes them average.

So what does that make us?

Higher than average.

Typical deluded academics.

 

We think we have chance. That we’ll just turn a corner and become brilliants, or whatever. Step into our genius. We can’t rid ourselves of hope.

 

We think it’s all going to go somewhere. That our lives will be justified. That it won’t all just be a disaster. That we can gather up all the crumbs. Make it all make sense. By finishing our great project, whatever that is. Our great work! Then looking back from the promontory of our great work. At the path we’d taken – because it’d become a path by then. It all made sense – everything we’d undergone. Everything we’d done.

We would always have been going somewhere, even if we didn’t know it. We had a plan, even if we had no real idea of the plan. Everything would make retrospective sense!

It’s like when you read a biographer of a writer, of a thinker. All the years before they made it. All those muddled years when life wasn’t going so well. When Hegel was some middling tutor who’d got his pupil pregnant. He didn’t know, did he? That it would all be justified, soon enough. That every wrong turn was, in fact, a right one.

 

The mediocre years. The not-getting-anywhere years. The knocking-in-vain-at-all-the-doors years. The bit-of-a-disaster years. The not-adding-up-to-much years. Redeemed!

 

We can say all these things, call ourselves idiots, because we were still holding onto the idea that we might be geniuses.

 

Whilst all along having that secret faith that stupidity would transform. That our studies might lead us into that secret Intelligence that was always ours. Into our secret Genius.

And what was UK style European philosophy, anyway? No one will remember, in time. The whole academic ecosystem – the departments, the societies, the lecturers, the postgraduates will be forgotten.

And it won’t even matter that no one remembers. Because none of us has ever achieved anything. Because we can barely keep our departments open.

We can barely even hand over functioning European philosophy departments to the next generation. And there barely is a next generation. It doesn’t matter! Who cares?

It’s best forgotten. Best buried in the memory. It came, it went, without meaning. We achieved nothing worth keeping. Did anything important happen? Anything show itself? What were the lessons of failure? That there were no lessons. That it will all just blow away, and so will we.

An episode, that’s all. A failed experiment. A flare up. A fever. An outbreak. That was only ever a bad influence. That only lead to bad readings of the European greats. To general license.

Let it pass unmourned. No need to grieve for it, the European philosophy plantation. There are some things that just can’t succeed. That won’t succeed. Just … aberrations. Swervings. Blind, senseless.

A minority interest. A hobby, of sorts. A spasm. A jerk. A whim of fate. A let’s see what will happen if …

But some things just won’t take. Won’t thrive in British soil. Will not suit the British temperament. That can be abandoned without consequence. That do not need to be pursued.

An effort in vain. An unsuitable import. A foreign thing that didn’t take. Didn’t land. Didn’t spread roots.

A futile cry for things to change. Into the British heart! That met only British rancour. And eventually, when it came, a British defeat.

It withered. It didn’t grow on the vine. It produced no seed – unless we were the seed – God knows!

 

And what survives of it now, British European philosophy? the loyal twenty eight who turn up to the annual conference. A few old profs with European connections. With European enthusiasms. Who by some accident of birth or heritage actually spoke some other language. Who weren’t entirely provincial. Who actually went back and forth across the English channel. Who weren’t afraid of France, as we were. Scared of Germany!

Old profs … emerituses now … Cultured, in the old style. Literate, in the old way. Well read, as people used to be. Used to travelling over there. Criss crossing the continent. In the long summer, as was.

Impossible, for us, that life. Inconceivable! Beyond our reach, Europe. Beyond our ken, the continent. Worlds that are not ours. Places where we could not belong. Could not take root!

In another life, perhaps. In a future life, we’ll be born European. Born on the continent!

 

For a while, philosophy caught a European fever. For a while, there was a taste for European philosophical fireworks. The desire for some European colour.

 

Are we their fault, those professors, who started European philosophy programmes? Who set up the founding departments? Can they be blamed for us?

Did they foresee us? Were they aware of the dangers? Did they understand what they might create?

Pseudo European monsters. Would-be European mutants. Hybrids gone wrong. Fucked up splicings.

Febrile! Incautious! So lacking in British judgement. Who didn’t know to stay in their British empiricist lane. Their British liberal channel.

 

European philosophy, left to enthusiasts! To those who knew nothing of Europe. Who had no idea about Europe. And about the essential divide between Europe and the UK. Who didn’t know their intellectual history. Let alone their philosophical history. Let alone our actual history – and the implications of our actual history.

After all, we’d never been invaded, in the UK. We’d seen off the Hun. We’d stood alone in Europe. We weren’t swayed by European fevers. We weren’t susceptible to European madness. To -ism politics of what ever kind.

Didn’t British sobriety save the day? Our natural British scepticism. We didn’t fight a war to let this French stuff in. This German stuff!

We were betrayers, in the end. Traitors, just as sure as those Cambridge spies! Turncoats. We’d turned out backs on what we had been given. Who’d thrown away our training. Our instincts. Whose heads might as well be on fire.

 

We were as bad as those other humanities subjects. Those English department theorists. Ecclecticists! Theorists!

 

We’d gone weird. Gone dark. We were followers of Strange European gods. Worshippers of European idols. Deliberate obscurantists. Language-maulers. Thought-distorters. Stranglers of reason. Murderers of the possibility of civilized debate.

The unsummarisable-in-clear-English. The endlessly prolix. The frustratingly convoluted.

Do not engage! Don’t go near it! Keep back! Stay away from the danger!

 

Ah, if only we could be saved from this. If only there could have been an intervention. If only someone sensile could have reached us. Dissuaded us. Put us on the right path. Shown us a better direction.

If only they knew how mad we’d gone! If only they were aware of the depths of our fever. Our foreheads virtually throbbing. We’d disappointed them, our forebears.

 

Why weren’t we warned? Why didn’t we heed those warnings! What had gone so wrong that we were so susceptible? Stranger danger, right?

The shame of the British education system. The indictment of the UK education system. Of the expansion of higher education!

Blame that vast expansion of unis. When our kind were actually allowed to do MAs and PhDs. When we were brought into the academy. From the working classes. Through diversity programmes.

With dubious A-levels. With poor grades. With loose morals. Not British, not really. Not part of the New Tradition. Not all analytic-philosophised-up. Not inoculated against European fever. Enthusiasts. Idiots. Late developers, or non developers.

It was at that point that they essentially lost control. Our numbers were too great. Populists, probably. Dubious types. Without intellectual credentials. Who stood in no British lineage. Who were part of no British tradition!

 

Gone, when the days when the unis were filled with Ryle – approved Oxbridge types. All the keen young analytic philosophers were sent out to colonise the provinces. To secure the kingdom. To clear and hold the analytic hegemony. To drive our British idealism and other dubious things once and for all.

 

Once upon a time, what was and was not philosophy was agreed upon. When the proper domain of philosophical teaching and research was clear.

Once upon a time, you could have, therefore, a meaningful debate. When everyone spoke the same philosophical language in the UK. When there was agreement about the rules of philosophical engagement. When philosophical progress could be made. When you could keep up with things. When there wasn’t an endless multiplicity of journals.

We’ve internalised the judgements. We know what we’re worth, or not worth. We’ve naturalised the rejections. We’re part timers, at heart. We should only ever have been part-timers. We found our level as part timers.

A full time wage: not for us. A full time job: undeserved! Unwarranted! We should have kept to our lane. To our natural level. To our part time confinement.

But Cicero broke us of our pens. From our place in the pecking order. Which was really the natural order.

 

Didn’t we have lower IQs than full timers? Weren’t we most dysgenic? More prone to mutation? To, no doubt, sterility.

We’d never manage to reproduce ourselves academically: and that was how it should be. There should not be more of our kind: we should never be allowed to supervise students. No postgraduates for us! No MA students! No PhD students. To lead astray! To fill with our dubious ideas!

It’s survival of the fittest, the ablest in academia – and rightly so! The laws of the jungle. Keeping the academic hierarchy as it should be. Maintaining the bottom at the bottom and the top at the top. Preserving the order of rank. The whole academic food-chain! The whole academic chain of being!

The part timer should be sterile. There was a reason why things were as they were.

 

And weren’t our accents wrong? And weren’t our gestures wrong? Didn’t we deserve a prolonged and systematic campaign of humiliation?

There were norms to be enforced. Gates to be kept closed. We needed to stay at our level. Where, after all, we’d do our best work. Where we’d work to our abilities. Where we’d be happiest!

In our place! In our paddock! Where we’d work under the direction of the full timers. Supervised and indeed closely monitored by full timers. Kept in place and indeed constantly reminded of our place by full timers. As it should be!

We should never have been let out of our cages! Should never have been just allowed to roam! But that’s what Cicero did: let us our of our cages! Allow us to roam!

 

Part timers, as necessary as bin men. As roadworkers. The world needs its little people. Its chandalas. Necessary! Numerous!

 

Of course they couldn’t keep track of us, the full timers! Of course the full timers shouldn’t keep track of our names! It was too much to expect.

No doubt to them, we seemed to multiply like flies. Like vermin. Like all the scavenging creatures that reduce a corpse to bones in a matter of seconds.

We were living, no doubt, on the corpse of the uni. On its last remains. And really only completing the destruction. Really only intensifying the decay. We were probably spontaneously generated from the rotting of the university. Of philosophy! We were the flies. We were the maggots.

 

Disgustingly busy. At it, night and day. Oh so industrious. So willing. So flexible. Ununionised. Unprotected. Out there. Taking on anything and everything. Disgusting, in its way! Desperate! And really only arousing disgust. And really being only repugnant.

 

Swarming. Regrouping. And busy! Desperately busy! How were they supposed to tell us apart?

 

We didn’t speak fluent academic. We didn’t pray at the right altars. Genuflect at the right idols. Not proper academic Marxists, like them.

We didn’t virtue signal in the right way. We weren’t appropriately sanctimonious. We didn’t tow the appropriate line. Make the right noises. Follow the latest academic trends and microtrends.

Things move quickly in academia. It’s always about leap aboard the moving train. Becoming au fait with the latest thing. And we were never au fait with the latest thing.

 

Which is why we knew our place in the whole academic division of labour. Which is why we knew our role was to free things up for those higher up in the food-chain. They needed time, God knows! They had work to do – of course, of course.

Leave it to the part-time wallahs. To the take-your-seminars wallahs. To the bought-with-research funding wallahs. To the academic coolies! To the philosophical wetbacks!

 

The part time thing was part of the academic sorting device. The academic heuristic. A way of telling what there was to expect of you. A signal of status, so that everyone would know who you are?