Work in Progress

The old campus.

Is that what they’re calling it now?

That’s what I’m calling it. It’s almost deserted.

They’ll moving the History of Art next. And English Literature.

The days of the humanities are numbered. They don’t know it yet. The writing’s on the wall. It’s already ended. Spiritually. It’s over.

Do you think?

The humanities are in the past. Come on. It’s inevitable. It’s thermodynamics. Everything … dissipates. They’re just following the logic of all things.

None of them spoke up for us – the other subjects. None of them objected to our Organisational Management move. First they came for the philosophers, and I kept silent …

So they deserve what they get. The humanities deserve it. Why should we give a fuck?

It’s always ruins with us. We’ve always come after it, the real thing. The party’s always and already over. Everything’s in the past.

Except we’ve been invited to a party in the ruins. A postgraduates’ party.

Why did they want to invite us? We’re so old …

Maybe the postgraduates are planning something. They’re very mysterious.

A party – is that what we really need?

You’ve got to admit, it’s intriguing.

A saving power party – that’s what they called it on the invites.

When the darkness grows, there too grows the saving power. That old cliché.

Who is it they want to save?

Themselves. All of us. The whole universe. I don’t fucking know.

Well, it’s too late for the campus. It’s all … just … ruins.

Sure: the darkness grows, the desert grows, all that stuff.

Our descent.

Do we want to bring the dead back to life, or something.

What dead?

The dead of the old department. Do we want to bring them to life? To retrieve them, like Eurydice.

Eury-who?

The one Orpheus was trying to bring back from the dead.

What would we do with the old department?

They could save us.

Could they, though?

It was a real department – not like ours. It had its own culture, it’s way of doing things. It had its standards. Its notable names. It lasted a while. Thirty years or so. From just after the war to the 1980s. Students remembered it lovingly.

There was a room set aside for debate, most of the day. The Cave, they called it. With some staff member always in attendance, ready for any kind of philosophical talk.

We would never have got into the old department, you know. As students, I mean. We didn’t have the A level grades.

All the better.

We couldn’t have participated in any of their debates. We could never have been part of their philosophical to and fro.

Exactly so.

We wouldn’t have known what to do there. We’re not intellectuals.

We don’t want to retrieve anything. We don’t want Eurydice. We don’t want the old department.

We want in its death. We want what cannot be.

What do you mean? We want it in its impossibility – in the impossibility of that kind of philosophy. In the humanities of the old days. We want our Eurydice forever dead. We want everything dead. We want the endless death of philosophy and the humanities.


We want the dead Eurydice, not the one who can be brought back to life. We want the buried as the buried. The forgotten as the forgotten. We want the dark as the dark. The hidden as the hidden.

We want the forever dead. The death deeper than death. The preliminary flood that’s already washed everything away …


We want to retrieve the old department. We want a taste of what the university used to be. We want the old standards. An academic world that makes sense. Before mass higher education. Before grade inflation. Before the vast press of student numbers. Back when students were educable. When they actually turned up. When they actually had things to say in seminars.

Before the collapse! Before our kind were allowed to run amuck! Back when our kind were kept well away! When our type could only dream of a life in the academy!


But we can’t want that – not really. We can’t what would totally exclude us. What would turn us into Jude the Obscures. Into Thomas the Obscures!


We want to encounter with terroir of all things. The ur-terroir. Out of which everything grows. The terroir of all terrors. The root.

The twilight of the Heideggerian. The whole Heideggerdamerung …


Tell us about your Heideggerian hopes and dreams. What’s the next big thing in Heidegger studies? Is there a next big thing in Heidegger studies?


Look, the analytic philosophers have their Nazis, too. Frege – he was a Nazi.
Who else?


The Heideggerian hulk. I think he’s turning green?


You have to memorise the whole of Heidegger. And there’s a lot of Heidegger. There’s a quote from Heidegger for every occasion, right Helmut? Weddings. Birthdays. Bar mitzvahs.

A place to rest for a few years, but no more. A place to catch our breaths. A reprieve. A respite. A safe perch – for a while, but only for a while.


She wanted to stop us from finding our place in the uni. From finding our footing in the uni. For finding our academic sea legs.


We were not to become naturalised. Native academic speakers! We were never to be given full university citizenship.

The question that philosophy guards. That it watches over. That it asks itself endlessly. That it asks the world. That’s its sole justification.

Hasn’t analytic philosophy spread to Germany now. Isn’t it spreading across Scandinavia? North American’s gone – obviously. So is Australia. There are a few holdouts mainland France, for example. In India. China! They tried to import analytic philosophy to China, and they failed! Hilarious! They rejected it, the Chinese. Of course they did! But the pressure’s on. They’ll conquer China in time …

Haven’t they made in-roads into Africa? Aren’t they scratching logical notation on Ghanian blackboards?

The car park.

You haven’t even got a car. How do you manage, without a car? I suppose you have philosophical objections to cars. And business. And general prosperity.

It’s just resentment, anyway.

Why? I can’t even drive.

Exactly – that’s part of it. You won’t equip yourself for a normal life. Like normal people. You think you’re special. Which just means that you’re especially incompetent. Don’t deign to function in the world. To be normal. To act like a responsible grow up.

Is that what you are, a responsible grown up?

You don’t even have a smartphone, do you?

It’s resistance.

What a joke.

You can’t use cash in this carpark. You have to have the app.

You let me pick you up, didn’t you? You didn’t walk here. You’re content to be otherworldly. Looked after. You think you’re always going to be looked after. You’re dependent, right. Not much of a turn on, is it?

A big car makes me feel all girly and looked after.

Really?

What if – what if that? Your parents should have taken care of you better. Prepared you.

I’ve done okay, haven’t I?

Anyway, I’m skint.

Skint … You’ll never be a good provider, will you?

You’re so quiet today. When you should be apologising.

Apologising for what?

For it being so cold. For bring me out here.

It was your idea.

It was yours. Let’s go for a walk, you said. Let’s get some air, you said. Let’s fill our lungs. And now we’re dying of exposure. Well, I am.


Aren’t you scared someone will recognise you out here? Expose our torrid affair? Our affairlete, anyway.

I want it exposed. I want the world to know. I don’t care. Anyway, who’d be out on a day like this?

We’re sports. We’re stunts. We’re experiments – stupidity’s experiments. We’re mutants of ignorance.


How could she inflict us upon philosophy, Livia? How could she do this to philosophy? Why did she want to be so cruel to philosophy? What had philosophy ever wanted to do to her?

A doubled up laughter. A laughter at laughter. That attained … what?


Last laughter. A laughter that knew the folly of all things, and of everything that tried to rise above folly! A laughter that knew the folly of rising above folly. Of all dreams of transcendence. Of all the substitutes for religion. Even our religion without religion. Even our religion of the empty sky. Of shattered immanence. Even out religion of the void – only the void.

Dear, dear Boner. The idiot’s idiot. An actual, workaday idiot, who somehow stumbled into philosophy. Who somehow got a philosophy PhD.

How was that possible? Can you somehow end up with a philosophy Ph.D.? Like a tattoo, after a drunken night out? Like a Las Vegas wedding?


What’s the opposite of a consigliere? That’s you, Boner.


Boner is here to make even the idiots look less idiotic.


Boner’s stupid questions. The play of Boner’s idiocies. Like a family dog. Amusing us because his stupidities are even greater than ours.


A clown’s clown. An idiot’s idiot. A fool’s fool. The jester’s jester, right. Village idiot of the year.

Every department needs one. Just for a point of contrast. To make us feel somewhat better about ourselves. Or as a mirror in which to see ourselves, reflected back.


The farce’s farce. What the farce watches to amuse itself.


Even the comic relief need comic relief. Even the slapstickers enjoy slapstick.


I think Boner was sent from the future to save us.

From what? Intelligence?


Dear, sweet Hardon – where would we be without your questions?


Questions, always questions, hard boy. An inquiring mind! Always eager to learn!


Fuck stick. Mr Stiffie. Tentpole Tudor. Morning Wood. Every day’s a school day. Love truncheon. Donkey schlong. King Dong.