Flies

One fine September day after another; summer comes each year belatedly, after it is summer, arriving only in that autumn which is never quite autumn, transforming all of this month into a threshold. And of course there is the start of a new term, which, as it comes, surprises me, because I never think I will keep my job, or, before, that I would find one.

I remember how I used to have to wait to the last minute – a week or so before term began – before I knew I would have work that academic year. How merciless they were, Marxists or non-Marxists, heads of departments, heads of teaching who would make me work thus! How dependent I was on their impressions of me! With what petty gratitude did I welcome a hour of part time teaching!

The lesson is clear: there is absolutely no relation between the philosophy espoused by these same heads of department, heads of teaching and the way they treated the proletariat, the part time staff! An obvious lesson, but difficult each time – the completely inconsistency of thought and life! The mismatch between what was said and what was practised! Head of department, I thought to myself, you have a million-pound house and a cottage in Wales, you’ve had everything, every chance!

Head of department, you found your job when there was no need to publish, no need for a Ph.D., it was the late 1960s, jobs were everwhere, jobs came to you, and you rose through the ranks. You rose, and no one ever asked you to raise income before you were promoted! You never had to raise three times your own income in research income before your promotion! Head of department, lecturer for whom I took seminars, lecturer who spoke on this or that philosopher upon whom I had published a clutch of papers! I was told: you don’t have enough expertise in this area. You just haven’t got a background in ethics. I said, but I’ve published these papers, here, here and here – papers on the topics you teach!, and thought to myself: and what have you published, nothing, not one line, not one line in your whole career!

What have you published, to have this swarm of Ph.Ds wanting teaching around you? What have you published that you would have power over us, that you can seize one of us as from a cloud of protons and make us real! What have you done that would have given you this power, property-millionnaire, you who have done nothing, who have lived in the golden years of our country, when work was plentiful and wages were high, you who brought that great house with five bedrooms and married and had children! You’ve done nothing of course, blinking man, kind man, amiable half-friend who would have us round, we paupers to your great house every year!

Every year, and you would bring up wine from your wine cellar, and speak of the wine you bought, the wine you collected, you who opened wine for our starters, a different wine for our main course and yet a different one for dessert, you who served us aperatifs before dinner and brandy after dinner! What marvellous taste you developed, what a marvellous cellar you keep, how wondrous that you give us a taste of what distilled itself from your life, not just the wine, but your great house, your cultivation, the books stacked up in your library, the views over open fields!

Ah, we part-timers are less real than you, we are like the flies who circle in empty rooms, one of us has died, one of us disappeared, what does it matter, for there are always more flies, there will always be flies, well qualified flies, each year with more publications, each year with more credentials, each year with more respect won from academic peers! Yes, we are flies and our job is to circle in the big rooms in your big house, you will have us round, every year, this is your concession to us, this is what we are given, it is a sign of your kindness, but your kindness is impersonal, we know that, it is bestowed equally on each, we know that, next year one of our company will not be here, but what does that matter, next year another will join us, but that still does not matter because you have been in this business a long time, racking up your pension, dreaming of your retirement, dreaming of selling up and moving to France, to the sun, speaking to us of your holidays and asking us about ours.

Holidays?, we think to ourselves – what are they? Holidays – who has time for a holiday, we have to write, we have to read, to graft, to apply for this job and then that one, to fill out this form and then that one, to contact this university and then that for a half-time research post, we’re busy, too busy to have holidays, for what would happen if we missed hearing about a job with a short deadline for application? what would happen if we were contacted for interview and they failed to find us, and another took our place at the interview for the job that could have been hours?

Holidays! Don’t you understand we are flies, circling and circling, faster and faster, flies without hope, but without time to think about hope, flies who move too quickly for hope, who will not allow themselves that luxury, flies who circle with neither hope or non-hope, flies without jobs who only want jobs, flies who dream only of jobs, who circle in search of work, who want only to survive year by year. Another year of work, that’s all we want. Another year, and we’ll take anything.

But when asked about holidays, what can we say? When we are asked about holidays, what should we say? We should speak of our holidays whether or not we had holidays. We should speak of our foreign trips regardless of whether we have been abroad. Why? Because academia is still upper middle class and the head of department is upper middle class. Because the upper middle class know only how to deal with the upper middle class. Because the upper middle class want reassurance from those they’ve taken into their houses that they too are upper middle class. Because the condition of visiting the upper middle class is to pretend you are upper middle class. Because the condition of their hospitality is the marvellous theatre of the upper middle class.

And so we vie, we flies, to speak of our holidays. To particularise ourselves, to make ourselves more real to him, our employer. To hypostatise ourselves in front of him, to give ourselves substance, to make ourselves less than flies or more than flies, to make him care about us, to pick us out from the other flies, to tell that we are not just a fly, but a fly who takes holidays, who has a life outside all this, who lives not for work, though we all live for work, but the holidays we take, the dreamy holdays, three or four weeks of holidays, that open to us every summer. Ah the holidays, our holidays to Provence or to Tyrol! The week we spent in Florence! Holidays!

Have you ever taken a holiday, have you ever had time to take a holiday, to think of holidays, do holidays ever cross your mind? But we must speak of holidays, we each of us speak of holidays and what we ate on our holidays and what we saw on our holidays, if only to make our host feel comfortable, if only to let him know that we are like him, that we have something in common, and this dreadful academic business is not all we have in common. For after all, he sympathises with us, he grants that times are harder, that he might not have got a job as easily as he did, that academia is madness, yes he agrees with us, he is sympathetic, he has some idea of what it’s like, but we shouldn’t speak of it we know that. It’s the last thing we should speak about.

We are flies, circling in his rooms, in the rooms of his house, but we must not talk about our circling, must not speak of what we have sloughed off in that circling, of the life we have given up, of the standard of living we have relinquished, of those great gaps of unemployment between term ending and term beginning, of the humilations of the dole and housing benefit, of the visits from dole officers, of our forced participation on training schemes, of the temporary work we take, a few days here and a few days there, no, we will not speak of this, we must not. It’s the last thing we should say, we who are gathered here in this vast house, we who have taken our place in a house in whose many bedrooms his children once lived – children who, now, have gone to university.

Children he and his wife brought up in the golden 70s and the golden 80s, children to whom nothing was denied, who were taken abroad, children who were shown something of the world, children who were sent to good schools, who have learnt a good deal, children whom they are helping out at university, who, no doubt, have had a flat bought for them, for whom a flat and a car were supplied. We are not like them, his children, he knows that. We have not been blessed thus. But what can we do?, he says, our host. Terrible times, he says. I’m glad my retirement is coming up, he says.

Ah, graciousness! His wonderful graciousness! And now the wine is going round again, he is the most attentive host, our glasses are being filled again, the food is going round again, and soon we will have to leave. Soon, yes, it will time to leave, time for the summer to open before us again, time for the dole and for training courses, time to work and apply for jobs and write, time to wander through this city that does not want us and through the university that is indifferent to us.

Time to wander without shadow, to circle around and around, time to swarm but without solidarity, time to swarm, each of us separate, each of us circling, time to disappear across this city, time to go home to our bedsits and shared housing, time to flee back to the rubbish from which we were spontaneously generated, time to return to the skips of thrown out library books, time to join the concrete and rubble of destroyed buildings, time to be threaded in paper threading machines.

For where do they think we go over summer, these heads of department? To where do they think we disappear? Ah, they know we are born from rubbish, born anew from rubbish each September, resurrected from the dead each September when they ring around at the last minute, knowing we are all waiting by the phone, knowing we are all dependent, waiting for the phonecall that will allow us to circle around once again, one more time.

Yes, we are born from rubbish, for them, spontaneously generated from the dross of the university, spreading like some vile cancer from mutated dross, spreading disease-like from university decay. Born from the residue of universities, from its foul excresence, we hatch and we circle, we are born, our sticky wings glisten in the sun, our compound eyes survey the world, our probiscii seek fresh nourishment, we come to ourselves in September and fly into the air, and fly around again, one more time.

Yes, one more time, around again, swarming flies, who can only ask one another about job applications and publications, flies who can speak to one another of interviews failed and papers rejected, flies who speak of what is real, flies who alone know what is real, proletariat-flies in touch with the real conditions of the university, fly-proletarians who know what the upper middle class do not know. Scum-proletarians who the upper middle class do not want to see, the beggars outside the gate, the mendicants in the alley, the prostitutes on the pavement, vile proletarians who are the living refutation of the upper middle class world of academia, flies who are born from dross and return to dross, flies adapted to the mad circulation of the world, flies whose movement is as one with the real movement of capital, flies hatched from capital and returning to it, flies who live capital, who know only capital, flies in whom capitalism dreams of itself, of its return to itself.

Flies stripped down to themselves, who know of nothing but circling, flies without rest, pared down, prepared, perfect vessels of Capital, fles ready for the new condition of labour, for the great casualisation, flies ready for the subcontracting of education to Microsoft, flies honed down for the great sell-off, flies who will teach this and that and that without expertise or preparation, flies who will move from this end of the country to another, flies who will take any job and every job, flies who will overload themselves with what needs to be done, because next year there may be nothing to be done, flies who arise when they are needed and disappear when they are not needed, flies like the nanobots who will one day repair our bodies, nanobot flies who ensure the smooth running of capital.

For we know, we flies, that the future is ours. The upper middle class know it, too. They want to keep their hands clean, but our hands are dirty. They want to keep their good conscience, but we are bad conscience through and through. They can see it: we’ll do anything.They can see what the system from which they lived produced. They can see the new breed, the disgusting breed, the everywhere-and-nowhere breed. Ah, they don’t like us, but that is okay. Ah, they have some little power over us, but that, too, is okay. Because our day is coming. We can feel it in our antennae. Our day is coming, we know that. When they retire, when they disappear to France, when they buy up cheap houses all over Europe, it will be our turn.

And we will rise and we will swarm. In us, scholarship is dead. In us, expertise is unnecessary. We will serve. We fly round and round and we will serve. Everything, all knowledge, will be online and we will facilitate and serve. Everything, all knowledge, will be owned by Microsoft, and we will work for Microsoft, after the great privatisation. Oh you upper middle class, reading Plotinus in Provence, what have you done! Oh you heads of department, to what have you closed your eyes! For we are coming, the know-nothings and the scorners of scholarship. We are coming, without knowledge and without culture, pared down and ready.