Do you think it’s possible to die of hatred? I asked H. Do you think a creature could have been who was so stupid they died of sheer stupidity? I said. Not as a consequence of that stupidity, I said, but from stupidity. And shame, I said, – do you think you could die of shame, I mean literally die? And what about boredom, I said, do you think you could die of that? Because I’m burning up with hatred and stupidity and shame and boredom, I said. I’m burning up and I think I will explode from hatred and stupidity and shame and boredom, I said.
I feel like one of the scientists on the space station orbiting Solaris, I said. Orbiting round and round and round the planet of my stupidity, I said. Round and round I go until I’m bored. But I cannot help but be fascinated, I said. It’s like my first book, I said. It mesmerises me, I said. Sometimes I pull it down from the shelf and open its pages, I said. I already know what I’ll find there, I said, but I want to find it again. I want the fact of my own stupidity to be confirmed, I said. And I want to enter my stupidity, to fall into it, to be embraced by it even as it bores me, I said.
Boredom is the modality of my fascination, I said. It’s still boredom, I said, but it’s boredom fascinated, I said. And in this case with what I sought to make with my life, I said. This is it, I say to myself, I said to H., this is what I worked for? A book published by a company which barely checks what it publishes, barely deigns to proofread it, barely deigns to publish it, I said, letting it creep out in the tiniest of editions, I said, effectively printing on demand from the first, I said. Printing on demand, I said, in short runs – it is little different to the way Zara operates, I said, constantly updating its stock, changing direction once a fortnight, moving rapidly, very rapidly I said. So too with the publisher in our late capitalism, I said.
This is the great lie of academia, I said, the great capture of creativity. That the book you wrote – the second rate commentary on this or that French thinker – is a badge of your creativity, a form of struggle against Capital, a little negentropic island in the midst of general decay. Phew, I finished it, that’s what you say to yourself, despite everything, I finished it despite everything – which is to say, despite Capital and the new demand it places on you. And what is that demand? Production, I said. To produce spreadsheets and funding applications and material for the audit – all that, I said. To produce virtual learning environments and reports on teaching, all that, I said.
The great lie: against the dumb production of administrative nonsense, you managed to write a book. You took your evenings and weekends back to write a book. You crept into the office in the evenings and at the weekend to work not on administration, I said, but on your book. So it is I orbit the planet of my stupidity, I said. Around and around the book that is supposed to be the concrete manifestation of my freedom I said. Bad commentary, I said, that’s my great cry of rebellion! Badly written and badly argued I said, and that was all the revolt I could manage!
Worst of all, I want always to excuse myself, I said. To say: but I wrote it in nine months in my spare time, in evenings and weekends, I said. And that is the great joke, I said, because this excuse is also a kind of pride. It says: oh, what I could have produced if I’d have had more time! It says: I will have to begin again, to write another book if only to erase the memory of the first book I said. And so it goes on, I said. Book after book after book, I said. Like a great sickness, I said.
Academics are like skeleton crew left on the space station in Tarkovsky‘s film, I said. We’re half-mad, I said, and living from the phantom products of our creativity, I said. Academia seems to grant our desires, I said. It seems to give flesh to our desires, I said. Capital repeats what was lost, bringing it to life again, I said, just as the protagonist Kelvin, meets his lover, Hari, who killed herself a long time ago. He meets her again, beautiful, loving, but also empty. And when, disturbed by this emptiness, he tries to leave her behind, to move into another part of the space station, she walks through sheet glass and metal doors to be with him, I said, wrecking herself. And when he blasts her off into space, she returns to him, I said, as if from returning from the dead. Only she remembers nothing, I said. Each time it is as though she is born again from Kelvin’s dreams and from his youth.
Isn’t there something of this in romance under the current conditions?, I said. As though the romantic scripts themselves had failed and romance itself had worn out, I said. Everyone’s working, I said, night and day. Working and moving around the country, from this place to that, I said. And everyone is contactable, I said, night and day. It’s hot desking in the office and working from home, I said, until worktime is all time and the home, too, is an office.
Romance – what of romance in the midst of all this? A kind of repetition – youthful ardour repeated, the sense that there is something to live for apart from Capital, I said. As though what returned in romance was the ability of laugh at Capital, I said. Laughter at Capital as it demands you move from here to there and then away from your lover, I said.
What is age when compared to this youth? Conservatism and foolishness, I said, adjustment to the fact of Capital and the sense of its inevitability. Strategy and careerism. But it is that your body has been wrecked, walking through sheet glass and metal doors to follow your career, I said. You’ve torn yourself up and torn up your youth I said. So it is with the academic monograph, the great incarnation of freedom, I said. Disinterested research, I said. Pure intellection, I said, how marvellous! And you’ll do anything to complete it, I said, working alone, as other academics are also alone on the space station I said. Each of you alone and working on your monograph I said. Alone and hoping you’ll get away with it, that you can snatch a few hours for yourself each day and complete it, I said.
But all along we are orbiting the planet of our stupidity, I said. The planet of Capital, I said, from which are born the ghostly correlates of what we take to be the work of our creativity. What I produce does not matter, I said. It is not anti-production, it is not the gift that breaks with the economy of production, it is simply a bad book in the great streaming of bad books, I said. That’s what we’ll be known for, I said: bad books.
The dream is ending, I said. Soon, books will count for nothing. Only income generation will count, I said. Monographs will cease to be of any importance, I said. What will matter is research funding, I said, the flood of money the government releases for academics to bid for, I said. Even in philosophy, I said. Especially in philosophy, I said. Philosophy will be a way the State returns to itself and confirms itself, I said. There will be only State Philosophy, I said, building elaborate new space stations to orbit the great planet of stupidity, I said.
When you ask me, ‘what are you working on?’, I said to H., I’ll say, ‘deepening my own stupidity’. ‘What are you working on?’ – ‘The perfection of State Philosophy’. ‘What are you working on?’ – ‘Allowing the State to perfect itself into the administrator of Capital, the limbs of Capital, it’s little mandibles, its pseudopodia’. ‘What are you working on?’ – ‘I’m trying to quicken the movement of Capital, to allow to return more efficiently to itself’. ‘What are you working on?’ – ‘I want to perfect myself as an instrument of Capital, a conduit which offers no resistance. I want to feel Capital steaming through me’.
Meanwhile there is the lie that the torn and shattered book, like Kelvin’s Hari, answers my youthful dreams of creativity. This lie confirms itself even as I whine that it is not the book I wanted to write. The book lies, I said, on every one of its pages. It is my alibi, that I can show people to justify poor pay and poor working conditions. ‘I wrote this – it is not the book I wanted to write, but …’ It is my pathetic act of rebellion, I said, the prize awarded me for giving my youth to Capital.
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