Author: Lars Iyer

We need to reverse the polarity of our despair, W. says. To change its direction. To transmute it into hope.

He remembers what Wittgenstein said about madness. 'It comes to you perhaps as a friend and not as an enemy, and the only thing that is bad is your resistance'.

We will have to plunge more deeply into our despair, W. says. To experience it.

Something was supposed to happen, W. says, as we watch the chests of the sleeping postgraduates rising and falling. But nothing happened. Someone was supposed to take notice, W. says, as the postgraduates sigh in their sleep. But no one noticed.  

Messianic politics: doesn't that describe our commitment? What did W. write on his Facebook profile under religion? Messianic. What, under political persuasion? Again: messianic. What, under interests and hobbies? The messianic epoch. But W.'s never been sure what messianism really means. What does it mean to talk about the Messiah when neither of us is in the least bit religious? And what is the meaning of political messianism?

He knows that the figure of the Messiah is always accompanied by the apocalypse, W. says. The Messiah, the apocalypse: you can't have one without the other. The Messiah only arrives at the end of times, in the Last Days, W. says. It's only at the end of politics that politics might become messianic. And we are at the end of politics, he says. Politics really is over.

We've never been too sure of our politics, W. admits. What's our position? Are we communists or anarchists? Socialism or barbarism: is that our motto? Or is it anarchism or barbarism? Is Marx our master, or Bakunin?

Of course, it's never really mattered. We know what we're against! Isn't that what matters? We're anti-capitalist! Of course we are! We're full of anti-capitalist pathos! We feel very left-wing. Very revolutionary!

He feels the hatred of the generations of the past, W. says. Of our philosophical ancestors who felt that something good might come of their struggles on the slaughter-bench of history. He feels their disappointment, those who expected something better to come.

But it's nothing compared to the hatred of our philosophical descendants!, W. says. They're not yet born, they've yet to appear on their scorched and burning earth, but he can feel their hatred even now.

Some of them, of course, will never be born. Some will be denied even the chance to appear. They hate us even more for that!, W. says. They hate him even more! 

I'm exactly the kind of person who would be drawn to Manchester, W. says. Who would make the Mancunion mistake. 

Oh, he can see why I romanticised Mancunion despair. But didn't I realise that such despair was only the desire to leave Manchester, the same city in which I had now marooned myself?

Of course, I was closer to the state of things in my Mancunion existence, W. says. I was closer to the truth of the world. I understood the honesty of the city, W. says. He admires that in me.

There's a terrible kind of Mancunion gravity, W. says. A kind of Mancunion tractor-beam. I was lucky to escape, W. says. Did I escape? W.'s sure I carry something of Manchester in me still.

He knows you can see the hills from any tall building in the city, W. says. He knows you can see all the way into Cheshire. He tries to hang onto that thought as he walks the streets, W. says. He tries to remember that there's something outside the plain of Manchester. Something apart from Manchester, other than Manchester.

W. sees me as a young student, quite lost in the city. He sees me: a speck, an atom, rucksack on my back, trying to find my way around. Didn't I understand that the city was no place for me? That it was hard enough for those who belonged there?

Postgraduates, lying in the grass, with dew on their faces. – 'They followed us to the end', W. says. 'Beyond the end!'

W. searches goes through my rucksack. A packet of corn nuts, and a packet of peanuts. Two packets of pork scratchings. And some obscure Indian snacks, sent over by my relatives. – 'Do you think you brought enough snacks?', W. asks.

W. loves to watch me filling my face, he says. He loves to watch me gratify myself. There's something innocent in it. Something charming.

He looks like Kim Il-Jong, I tell W. It's his grey trousers and grey top: he's a dead ringer for the Dear Leader. 

We musn't be afraid to see our world in apocalyptic terms, W. says. In religious terms. The language of the Last Days is wholly appropriate to our times.

He's always understood me to be a kind of Bartleby of politics, W. says. 'I would prefer not to': that's what my indifference to social question says. Or, better: 'Fuck off, I'm eating'.

'Are they coming for us?', W. asks. No one's coming, I tell him. – 'Can you hear sirens?' I can't hear anything except birdsong and faraway cars.

Ah, when will it end?, W. says. But it isn't going to end. It's going to go on forever, like a record in a locked groove.

We know what is coming. We know that a new dawn – the opposite of dawn – will spread its dark rays from the horizon. We know that we'll have to close our books, and cease our note-taking.

More questions. ‘How many people do you think you’ve offended?’, W. asks me. ‘How many people have you irritated? Have you angered?’ And then. ‘How many people have tried to sue you?’, because he knows that some have. ‘How many people have tried to run you out of town?’

W. begins again. ‘How many appetites have your spoilt? How many people have you put off their dinner?’ And then, 'What would you say is your most irritating trait? Your most rage-inducing one?' And then, ‘What do you think your clothes say about you? What about your hair? Your shoes? Does the way you dress befit your role as a thinker? As a would-be philosopher?'

Still more questions. ‘Do you think you have a noble face? A dignified bearing? Do you think you have the physiognomy of a thinker? An intelligent face?' And then, 'Do your rolls of fat make you uncomfortable? Do you think obesity gives you gravitas? Presence?' He pauses. 'At what stage would you consider gastric bypass surgery? Have you ever considered liposuction? Do you think you come across as a happy fat man, or as a sad fat man?' And then, 'At what stage will you have your mouth sewn up?'

'Of what are you most guilty?', W. says. 'What is your greatest source of shame? What is your greatest failing? Do you think you’ve failed? Do you think you should be ashamed? Do you have any real sense of guilt?' And then, 'What do you think you add to the world? What do you think you subtract? What is your net worth to existence? Do you think you’ve added to the balance of goodness in the cosmos, or evil? Are you on the side of the angels or the devils?'

‘How do you think you can make amends?', W. says. 'Do you think you can make amends? Reparations? Damages to intellectual reputation? Emotional damage? Digestive damage? How many people have you put off their dinner?’

Gin! W. demands. We wants a respite from his judgement.

W. is soothed by the Plymouth Gin botanicals. He can taste the oris-root and the coriander seeds. He can taste the orange peel.

Plymouth Gin is our realitätpunkt, W. says, our rallying point, our place of safety. Sipping Plymouth Gin is always a homecoming, W. says. Always a return to what is most important.

If only we had some Vermouth, we could make Martinis, W. says. In the Plymouth Gin cocktail bar, they swill your glass with Vermouth, specially imported from America, and then pour it out. Only then do they fill the glass with fresh Plymouth Gin and add a spiral of lemon peel, W. says. You need Vermouth only to pour it away, W. says, like an offering made to the gods.

My hotel room. W. takes his seat on the Chair of Judgement. It’s time to list my short-comings! It’s time to examine where I’ve gone wrong! To bury down to the root-cause!

‘Would you call yourself a moral man?', W. asks me. 'Would you call yourself a man of honour?', he asks. 'Do other people look up to you? Are others moved by you, inspired by you?' A pause. And then: 'Do you think you've touched other people's lives – in a good way? Do you see yourself as a man of thought, a man of profundity, a man who will leave a legacy?’

These are the questions that constantly circle in W.’s head, as he knows they do not circle in mine.

‘How do you think you’ll be judged?’, W. asks me. ‘As a serious man? As a man attuned to what matters most?’ And then, ‘Will you be remembered as a great soul? As a spiritual leader?’ A pause. And then: ‘How do you understand your failure? Who do you measure yourself against? What standards have you failed to meet?’

What was my significance?, W. asked himself, back then when we met. Did I illustrate some broader trend? Was I a man of our times, or against our times? And then the true horror dawned on W.: Lars is ahead of our times, he thought to himself. He’s a prophetic witness. He’s a living sign, such as you might find in the Bible.

W. thought of the later prophets, who are no longer speak with God as Moses and Abraham did – as with a neighbour, face to face, or as the Bible says, mouth to mouth. He thought of the prophets who God commanded to incarnate the message they were charged to deliver.

W. thought of Isaiah, told to wander naked and barefoot for three years, in order to send a message to the king of Assyria to parade his prisoners naked and barefoot to shame Egypt. He thought of Jeremiah, whom God told to make wooden yokes and put them on his neck; and when a false prophet broke them, to replace them with yokes of iron, in order to send a message that Israel will not put its neck under the yoke of Babylon …

But I was a prophet who didn’t know that he was a prophet, W. says. I was a sign who didn’t know what he signified. Didn’t his own role become clear?, W. says. Wasn’t it obvious what he was put on earth to do?

Philosophy gives substance to our suffering, W. says. Philosophy gives sense to suffering by communicating it to others. Speech, dialogue: that’s what overcomes futility, W. says. That’s what does combat with the senseleness of the world.

W. was going to let me speak: that was his role, he says. He was going to hear the suffering of the world as it resounded through me. He was going to decipher my bellowing. The Jew in him would redeem the Hindu, W. says. His Catholic atheism would redeem my Protestant atheism. He would bring fruit trees to my waste, and calm to my troubled waters …

The word, philosopher is an honorific, W. says. It’s a title that can only be bestowed on you by others. Do I think you deserve the title, philosopher?, W. asks me. Did I deserve it back then?

The desecrator of philosophy: that’s what I had become, wasn’t it? The destroyer of philosophy. I was at one with the apocalypse of philosophy, with the end times of philosophy. And wasn’t that why he was drawn to me?, W. says. Wasn’t that why he proposed our collaboration? I was close to the truth, W. says, despite everything.

‘True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves’: that’s Adorno, W. says. And I didn’t understand myself, did I?

I used to sleep in my office, W. remembers that. I’d unroll the sleeping bag I kept in the cupboard, and lie under my desk. All the better to get my work done in the morning! All the better to keep working halfway through the night! I’d wake up, bleary-eyed, and eat a day-old discount sandwich at my desk. I’d wake up, and brush my teeth in the bathroom, before anyone had arrived at work.

And then I’d get to it, W. says. Or imagine I was getting to it. I’d work, W. says. Or imagine that I was working. Because I wasn’t working at all, was I?, W. says. I wasn’t advancing in my thought. I wasn’t testing myself, running forcibly against my own limits, was I? I wasn’t reading philosophy, and I wasn’t writing philosophy. I was administering, W. says. I was lost in administration. I taught, it’s true, but I taught like an administrator. I gave lessons like a bureaucrat. Really, I’d become a galley-slave of philosophy. I’d become a drone of thinking.

In the meantime, in the southwest, W. would spend whole weeks preparing his lecture courses. Whole weeks, distilling his latest researches into something teachable. He would spend months carefully crafting his lecture notes, going over them again and again, writing up the research notes he made for his own studies. And what would I do?, W. says. Crib something together from Wikipedia, or whatever they had back then. Cobble something together from Sparks Notes, or some other online rubbish. Draw on one of the innumerable introductions to philosophy, the introductions to this or that thinker, this or that idea, that everyone’s writing.

Of course, that was before I bought my flat, W. says. It was before I made my amazing decision to invest in a property. It was before my damp years! Before the years of rats! I hardly knew what a slug looked like, did I? I’d barely ever seen a mushroom up close. And damp was something I read about in books, W. says. Something I associated with slums, with tenements.

W. invested in a Georgian town-house, he says. In a former ship captain’s house with three stories and marble fireplaces. He moved into a house which didn’t need a bit of work. He made a study of one of the third floor bedrooms. He rose early each morning, and was at his desk before the sun had even risen above the Plymouth rooftops.

And what about me, W. says. Dare he ask? Dare he even consider the mess I had got myself into? It was like The Blob, W. says. It was like X: The Unknown, he says. I was living in the wilds, W. says. I was living in the philosophical wastes …

The electricity failed in my kitchen, and began to fail in my living room. The walls turned green, then brown, then black. Rats settled beneath my floorboards. What horror! What horror! And how did I respond to my new surroundings?, W. asks. How did I hearken to the philosophical muse? I wrote, W. says. I blogged. Because that’s when they began, my blogging years, didn’t they? That’s when the years of raving began.

So the end of philosophy really has come, W. says. The philosophical apocalypse really is here. What has it shown? What’s been revealed? Lars lecturing. Lars publishing. Lars who actually has a job. If that isn’t a sign of the eschaton, what is?, W. says.

I actually think I earned my job, that’s the irony, W. says. I actually think I beat all the other postgraduates to full time employment because of my own merits.

‘What do you think they saw in you, your interviewers?’, W. asks. ‘Why do you think they gave you the job?’ Oh, he knows I struggled to find work. He knows that it took me years and years. I had a long period of whoring for work, just as W. had a long period of whoring for work. I had a long period of teaching an hour here, an hour there, of taking fractional posts in faraway places, just as he had long period of teaching an hour here, an hour there, of taking fractional posts in faraway places. I lived exclusively on discount sandwiches, just as he once lived exclusively on discount sandwiches. I drank only the cheapest vodka, just as he drank only the cheapest vodka. I worked, I worked night and day, just as he worked night and day. How I published! How he published! I spoke up at conferences! He spoke up at conferences! I tried to get my name known! He tried to get his name known. But I was a little more desperate than him, wasn’t I?, W. says. A little more keen.

W. got his job at his church college, where he taught no more than one hour a week, and I got my job at a northern university, where I taught no less than fifteen hours a week. W. worked with the warmest and gentlest of colleagues, who were genuinely interested in intellectual inquiry, and I worked with the most savage and difficult of colleagues, who had absolute contempt for intellectual inquiry. Administrative tasks at his college were equally shared out, W. says; everyone did his or her bit. Administrative tasks at my university were given to me, and only to me. W. was left to his own devices for research. He was given time – oceans of time! He was given lengthy sabbaticals of a year or more! I was denied any time for research. I was given no time – no time whatsoever; no sabbaticals, no research days. W. rose each morning and read and wrote all day. I rose each morning, and taught and administered all day. W. found it all very amusing.

I was a workhorse:  was that what the job search committee saw at the University of Northumbria? I would do anything whatsoever to keep my job: was that it? I was a man of desperation, that’s quite true, W. says. A man who feared unemployment above all other things: ytes, yes. But that wasn’t the only reason why they gave me a job, W. says.

It was because I was a man of the end that they employed me, W. says. Because I was a kind of wild man of thought, a man who’d emerged from the philosophical jungle. Not for my interviewers a candidate from a real university, like Oxford or Cambridge. Nor for them a properly scholarly applicant, a researcher fluent in several modern languages, and familiar with several ancient ones. Not for them a man of the archive, who had studied in the great libraries of Europe. Not for them a man of broad learning, a man of civilisation, a gentleman educated in the best independent schools of our country.

My interviewers knew things were at an end, whether consciously or unconsciously, W. says. My search committee knew the philosophical end times were here. So consciously or unconsciously, they decided to make a joke appointment, an appointment that laughs at the very idea of an appointment. They decided to create a parody of a lecturer, a position that satirisises the very idea of a lectureship. It was like Caligula appointing his horse as senator, W. says. It was like Cal, in 2000AD, appointing his goldfish as Chief Judge.

Will we have known what philosophy was?, W. wonders. Will we have understood what it might have become? No, they will never destroy philosophy, not entirely. Philosophy will survive so long as people suffer. But philosophy without an institution, philosophy without the university: what will it ever be but a cry of suffering, pure pathos? What will philosophy ever be but the roaring of the end?