Category: W.

W. dreams of leaving the university behind. He dreams of ending our captivity.

We need to discover the university in the university, W. says. We have to turn the university inside out like a glove, exposing it to everything it excludes …

To the working class, barred from the university by the cost of studying. To the insane, barred from the university because of their wayward reasoning. To the melancholics, barred from the university because of the misery of their lives. To the alcoholics, barred for shouting, barred for fighting. To the homeless, the vagrants …

W. reminds of how Robert Lenkiewicz, the Plymouth Rembrandt, used to let vagrants live in his studio. There were about fifty of them, in and around the huge canvasses he liked to paint, most of them crazy, most of them disturbed, screaming and shouting …

Lenkiewicz believed it was possible to become an ‘artist-saint’, he said. He was interested in ethics, he said, in a certain way of behaving, that was at one with painting. That was part of his calling.

One of the vagrants hanged himself in the studio. Lenkiewicz remembers cutting him down. The vagrant had lost an eye a few months ago, crashing through a chemist’s window, looking for a fix …

And he embalmed another vagrant, keeping his corpse beside him in the studio, to remind him not of his own mortality – that would be banal, W. says, but of the mortality and vulnerability of others.

Lenkiewicz used to keep a record of what they said, his vagrants, W. says. 'Without suffering, I'm lost: I wouldn't know what to do without suffering'. That's attributed to the Singer, he says, reading from his notebook. And there’s Black Sam, who speaks like a voiceover from a Malick film:

We're all strange people; we're all escapin'; we're all fanatics.

You searchin' for somethin', but what? If I could have one spark, just one spark.

There's some force that governs. Some gigantic force, but what does it govern?

Hasn't he been shot by philosophy, garrotted by it?, W. says. Hasn't he been hung on the philosophical gallows?

Philosophy cut his carotid artery. Philosophy cut his radial artery. Philosophy cut his ulnar artery. Philosophy cut his femoral artery.

He's thrown himself in front of the philosophical train, W. says. He's lain out on the road, ready to be crushed by the philosophical juggernaut, W. says.

Philosophy placed a pillow over his head and suffocated him, W. says. Philosophy poured hemlock into his morning tea.

Philosophy's put the barrel of a shotgun to the roof of his mouth. Philosophy's pulled the trigger.

The real philosopher never knows whether he's a philosopher, W. says. The real philosopher is modest, desperately modest. What notion does he have of his significance?

Perhaps some idea, W. says. Perhaps some sense, in his quietest hours, that he has understood something important. And what company that must be: the sense of having understood something important.

It's the most lonely thing in the world to be a philosopher, W. says. You're alone, dreadfully alone. You can't tell whether your ideas are of the highest import, or the greatest idiocy. You do not know whether your hunches and intuitions point to something worthwhile, or whether they are the spasms and twitchings of something dying.

To the real philosopher, there are no stars to steer by, W. says. All the landmarks have vanished. You're on your own, in the darkness.

Of course, in the end, the philosopher needs a problem – needs something that forces him through his studies, W. says. You need grit beneath the shell to grow a philosophical pearl.

And without it? You're only a dilettante, an idler in the garden of knowledge, W. says.

And what's his problem?, I ask him. What forces him through his studies? He's pondered this for a long time, W. says. At first, he thought it might be something in the Jewish tradition, even something about his own Judaism. Something about messianism, he thought. Or was it politics? Was it a sense of the outrage of our time – the outrage of capitalism?

Ah, it was none of those things, W. says. It's become very clear to him. I am his problem. I am what calls for thought.

In the end, the philosopher is afloat in his age like a pickle in a pickling jar, W. says.

In the end, the philosophy is only a fold of the present, a way that the present understands itself.

And when the present has been destroyed? When the disaster comes ever closer? Then the philosopher, too, must destroy himself. The philosophy, too, must become disastrous.

W. picks up a pork scratching. Doesn't it look a bit like Jesus?, he says. Actually, he thinks it looks a bit like me, he says, being almost entirely made of fat and gristle.

Ah, what the sky above Wivenhoe would have looked like if thoughts were fireworks, W. says. What brightnesses of the heavens, what explosions in the sky!

 A thinker needs a milieu, W. says. A place to think. Think of Kant, with his Konigsberg, walking the same route every day. Think of Kierkegaard in his Copenhagen, walking among the crowds …

The thinker needs regularity! External structure! The thinker needs good habits, if he's in it for the long haul, W. says.

Good habits: isn’t that what I lack?, W. says. Structure and discipline: isn’t that what I should cultivate? I am a chaotic man. A man without pattern.

Don't I lurch and spasm my way through my studies (my so-called studies)? Didn’t I twitch through my Sanskrit studies and flop my way through my musical studies?

I've got no milieu. That's why I've never got anywhere, W. says. I've no walking route, no daily schedule.

W. was a man of particularly regular habits when he lived in Wivenhoe, he says. Het himself a particularly rigorous schedule of study. Four hours at his desk, and then a walk to take the ozone. A light lunch, followed by classical guitar practice. An hour at his German, or an hour at his Greek. An hour at his Hebrew. Then four more hours at his desk before dinner. And after dinner. A walk along the sea-edge, W. says. A walk to take the ozone, and to let his studies of the day knit themselves together in his head.

Essex University. We need to get out of here! We need to get away! W. suggests we head to Wivenhoe, the fishing village where he used to live as a student. We could find a pub, settle down for evening, and then walk out along the sea, and be revived by the ozone.

Wasn’t Wivenhoe where they all lived, the Essex postgraduates? Wasn’t it along the sea that they used to stroll, singly or in pairs, to be revived by the ozone? Walking out by the quay, you’d never know who you might bump into, W. says. You’d never know who had also gone outside, to take the ozone.

I’m taking the sea air, said one postgraduate to another. The ozone is reviving us, said one pair of postgraduate strollers to another.

W. thinks of the commemorative plaques that will one day be placed on the houses where the postgraduates lives. Here lived X, philosopher of Punnett Squares. Residence of Y, philosopher-historian of the Rue Saint-Benoit.

And he thinks of the streets they might rename, after particular topics of discussion. Bifurcation Street. Dissipative Structures Road. Teleosematic Avenue. Indeterminism Way.

And shouldn't Wivenhoe itself be renamed? Should it be called New Jena, or New Freiburg? Should it be called Paris-on-sea? Ah, but Wivenhoe will be regarded as sui generis, W. says. One day, they'll speak of the Wivenhoe School, or the Wivenhoe Discoveries. Wivenhoe will be a synonym of a whole style of thinking. A rebirth of thinking …

They've sacked all the humanities staff at his college, W. says. He's the only one left. The only one, the last philosopher.

He wanders the corridors that used to echo with the great names. He walks through the empty quadrangle where he used to talk Kant with his colleagues. He sits alone in the refrectory, where fellow scholars would discuss Luhmann and Ellul, and wanders past the empty offices where he had reading groups with other academics, puzzling over Prigogine together, pondering Michel Serres …

And now? The college seminar series is on the tennis stroke of Pete Sampras, W. says. They're holding an international conference on the legacy of Fatima Whitbread.

He is the last philosopher, W. says. He knows that now. The last philosopher in Britain, and the truth of philosophy in Britain.

What they've done to him, the destroyers! What they're doing to philosophy!

It's like that film Last Days, where Kurt Cobain wanders round in a daze before he kills himself, W. says. It's like The Ice-Storm, with that kid wandering along the icy road, and you know he's going to die.

He'd be a kind of martyr, a kind of witness, W. says, if anything were really at stake. He'd have a kind of dignity, if there was anything to defend. Philosophy's already been destroyed in Britain, that's the truth of it, W. says. Destroyed and a hundred times over. A thousand times. They've shot a thousand arrows into the corpse of philosophy in Britain, W. says.

Why doesn't anyone understand how dead philosophy is? How dead he is, W. says, the last philosopher.

'It was your time', W. says. My time, and that of people like me. The time of the new breed, of contractual staff, desperate staff, harried and harassed. The new breed: people like me, W. says, rats crawling over rats. People who will do anything. People who will do anything for a job …

‘You would say, “yes” to anything, wouldn’t you?’, W. says. Oh, he remembers how it was. I was everybody’s monkey. Everybody’s jester, the bells of my cap ringing as I passed down the corridors. Everybody’s carthorse, everybody’s houseboy, the slave who danced in his chains. The dancing bear, and grinning court dwarf …

How he would have loathed it, W. says! How he would have longed to stand upright! How he would have yearned to have his blinkers removed, and his iron collar unlocked. How he longed for the bit to be removed from his mouth …

But I didn't mind. I, and others like me, would do anything. We followed every order. We dashed like idiots. We lived as though a serial killer was chasing us down. Never waiting. Never taking time.

Everything was slapdash, everything was done in a hurry, every corner cut … We knew nothing of patience. Nothing of slow, calm work, day after day in the library. Nothing of real research, which takes months and years.

We knew nothing of the methodical. Nothing of real understanding. Just a panicked dash through texts. Just a race through secondary and introductory texts. A dash through idiot guides and Wikipedia entries …

'It was your time', W. says. 'The time of the maggot'. The time of the wriggler-opportunist, bred by Capital, laid by managers, spreading, disease-like from the general decay.

I was a maggot, nothing more, W. says. I was a nightmare the old university had about itself … I am where it festers, and its festering. I am where it rots, and its rotting …

And there's worse to come, W. says, shuddering. My breed, the new breed, are only the beginning of the end. The Beast is coming, W. says. The Beast of which I am a prophet and augur, W. says. The anti-Christ of which I am only the anti-John-the-Baptist.

The corpse of the university floats face down in the water, W. says. We’re poking it with sticks. None of us can believe it. Is it really dead, the university? Is that really its bloated, blue-faced corpse? Yes, it really is dead, and there it is, floating, face down, W. says. There’s no point pretending otherwise, not anymore. The university is dead, and there is its corpse.

Oh, there are signs of life in the university. It seems that it’s alive. But that life is the life of maggots, he says, devouring the substance of the university from the inside, living on its rotting.

There are parasites who live from death, and which death produces, W. says. The corpse of the university is a breeding ground. The corpse is where Capital comes to lay its eggs. The university is that rotten place where Capital deposits its eggs …

The old elite are going: isn't that W. and his friends said to themselves at the beginning of their careers? The old elite – the toffs from Oxford and Cambridge – were going, and now it was their time, the time of the working class. The time of new professoriate.

But that's not what happened, was it? The old elite sensed what was to come. The old professoriate new what was coming, which was why they were taking early retirement and disappearing into the countryside.

The rise of the manager: that's what they saw. That's why they got out in time. The rise of internal competition, and short-term contracts. The rise of funding bids and research excellence frameworks …  

How quickly they came, the manager-flies, to lay their eggs! How quickly they hatched, those eggs. Until the university was full of maggots, blind and wriggling …

It's happening just as I predicted, W. says. The collapse of the universities. The collapse of civilisation. Don't you realise how good we're having it?, I've always said to him. These are the best of times, I've said, over and again. You think this is bad? It's going to get worse, much worse, I told him, and I was right.

Why did it take an idiot to tell him that?, W. wonders. But some idiots are savants, of course. Some idiots have some weird talent, like the guy in Rain Man. Some idiots are attuned to a secret knowledge.

It was obvious to me, at any rate: they were destroying the universities: of course they were. How could it be otherwise?, I said. They're destroying the humanities: shrugged shoulders; so what else is new? Let them destroy it all, I whisper. Let it all come down.

Because they’re already ruined. Because they’ve already been destroyed: isn’t that what I’ve always maintained? Now he sees that I’m right, W. says. Now he sees that I was right all along.

It is small kindnesses that redeem history, W. says. Small kindnesses – that’s all we have left as the great machines grind on all about us. The great political machines, the great economic machines. The great machines of regeneration …

Small kindnesses, W. says. The miracle of goodness, which appears only in isolated acts, in stupid, senseless generosity, in gratuitous altruism, as you’d find a Russian novel, like that shown by the characters of Dostoevsky and Grossman, by the holy idiots of Dostoevsky and Grossman …

He wishes I were a holy idiot, W. says, and not just an idiot. He wishes I showed a Dostoevskian innocence or a Grossmanian selflessness. He wishes I was an unworldly man, instead of being all too worldly, extra-worldly, W. says.

Sometimes, in a reverie, I step forward in a new way in W.'s imagination. Sometimes he imagines me wandering barefoot and almost naked in the severest frosts, driving away all self-love and pride, living out my life in prophetic service. He imagines me voluntarily taking on humiliation and insults to achieve the proper depth of humility, meekness and goodness of heart.

He imagines me rejecting all dignity and composure of mind, seeking to evoke nothing but contempt in my fellow human beings, all the while cultivating love for my enemies and persecutors. He imagines me as a fool for Christ, homeless and half-naked, living in humility, patience and unceasing prayer …

And when he comes to? There I am, before him again, a fool for no one, who has rejected all dignity, all self-love and pride, a man who has voluntarily accepted humiliation and insults, and who evokes nothing but contempt in his fellow human beings because he could not do otherwise …

There was kind of distractedness to him, our friend from Taiwan friend (W.’s friend from Taiwan), W. says. A vagueness, as though he wasn't quite in tune with the world, wasn't quite in focus. Our thinker's outline always seemed blurred, his replies hesitant, W. says – hadn’t we noticed that? When we asked him our questions, and we had many questions, there would be long silences, great pauses and interregnums. And he'd reply, most often: I don't know. Because he didn’t know, and he knew that he didn’t know. He rested in non-knowing.

His idea — the idea that lives through him, breathes through him — brings with it the non-idea, his thought brings with it non-thought. That was why he was happy with silence. He rested in it. He was happy not to know and to say he didn’t know. Because he did know something. He actually knew something: his idea. And that certainty, the sun that had risen through him, was such that everything else seemed dim and far away.

Ah, how far away we must seem to him, our thinker from Taiwan! How far away we were even then, W. says. He didn’t need others. He was alone in a new way, elected by his idea, ennobled by it.

But he was lonely, too, we remember that. A kind of isolation comes with thought, real thought, it’s quite clear. And wasn’t that why we took him out on the town, when he came to Newcastle? Wasn’t that why we introduced him to Geordie girls, who welcomed him with the warmth that you only find in the northeast?

It was cold outside, terribly cold, and, dressed in virtually nothing, as all Geordie girls dress in virtually nothing, they'd stopped in the pub for a shot. That's when I stepped up to them, to his awe, W. says. That's when I offered to buy them a drink.

There’s no question that our friend from Taiwan was extremely impressed, W. says. Even moved. To have been introduced to feminine grace, W. says, after his travels. To find himself in the presence of feminine warmth, after his near solitary life as a thinker.

They knew how far he had been from earthly life. They sensed how far he’d roamed, on the journey of thought. He’d been out among the farthest stars: the Geordie girls knew that. He’d been out to the edge of the known universe, and thought among the quasars: that was clear from his reticence, and his blurry outline.

He’d roamed anti-stars and anti-galaxies. He’d wandered out among the anti-electrons and the anti-baryons. He met the anti-Lars (a towering genius), and the anti-W (very much in the shadow of his friend). He wandered to the end of time, and his thought was at one with the end of things: that was clear from his pauses and silences.

They understood, the Geordie girls. – ‘Eee, would you like a kiss, then?’, one asked him. – ‘I don’t know’, he said, smiling. – ‘Eee, do you want to come out dancing’? – ‘I don’t know’, he said, his smile broadening.

There was no question that our friend from Taiwan (W.'s friend from Taiwan) was extremely impressed, W. says. Even moved. To have been introduced to feminine grace, Geordie style, after his travels. To have found himself in the presence of feminine warmth, after his near-solitary life as a thinker.

The Geordie girls sensed how far he had been from earthly life, our friend from Taiwan (W.'s friend from Taiwan), W.'s sure of that. They sensed how far he'd roamed, on his journey of thought. He'd been out among the farthest stars: the Geordie girls knew that. He'd been out to the edge of the known universe, and thought among the quasars: that was clear from his reticence, from the hesitancies in his speech.

He'd roamed anti-stars and anti-galaxies. He'd wandered out among the anti-electrons. He'd met the anti-Lars (a towering genius), and the anti-W (very much in the shadow of his friend). He wandered to the end of time, and his thought was at one with the end of things: that was clear from his pauses and silences.

They understood him, the Geordie girls. They understood what he needed. – 'Eee, do you want to come out dancing?' – 'I don't know', he said, similing. – 'Eee, do you want a kiss, then?' – 'I don't know', he said, his smile broadening.

How long is it since I wrote to our friend in Taiwan (W.'s friend in Taiwan)?, W. asks me. W. hasn't written to him in ages – years, he says. If you don't contact a friend in five years, then he's no longer a friend, that's W.'s principle. And to lose our friend in Taiwan (W.'s friend in Taiwan) would be a terrible thing.

Ah, how can he forget the sight of him, when we met him at the station. His weightlifter's vest … His Rupert the Bear vest … Our hearts lifted. Our speaker had arrived, and all the way from Taiwan!

And what did we do with him? Where did we take him? W. shakes his head. To the worst Chinese resturant in Newcastle. It was the only place open, I'd said. Our friend (W.'s friend) had travelled halfway round the world, crossed whole continents, and we took him to the worst Chinese restaurant in Newcastle.

It was my fault, W. says. My Oriental food enthusiasms. My dim sum enthusiasm. Surely a better restaurant was open in Newcastle in the mid-afternoon! Surely we could have found somewhere else!

Our friend had travelled halfway round the world, all the way from Taipei, Taiwan, a centre of great Chinese-style food, to Newcastle, which is no way renowned for Chinese-style food, W. says. Our friend had come the greatest distance possible, just to give a talk at my university, and we were going to take him to a restaurant that could only be the most inferior imitation of what he knew from back home!

W. warned me, he remembers. What did he whisper to me on the way to Chinatown? We mustn't poison our friend from Taiwan (his friend from Taiwan)! But how could he have known?, W. says. How could he have known to the hole to which I was leading them. The Oriental Buffet, W. says. All you can eat for £5, he says, shaking his head. The worst Chinese restaurant in Newcastle. The Oriental Buffet, my idea of a restaurant meal, W. says. The Oriental Buffet … God knows!

Our friend looked ill, as we sipped our Jasmine tea. I looked ill. W. felt ill, and that was before we began to eat. We hadn't even seen the menu! Hospitality is a great art, W. says. It's the art of arts. And here we were, as hosts, desecrating hospitality.

Still, he put a brave face on it, our friend from Taiwan (his friend from Taiwan), W. says. He took the reins of the conversation, as he always does. He was grace itself, as he always is. He tried to cover up the horror he must have felt at the dim sum, as it came glistening to our table. He didn't retch as he nibbled on chicken feet.

Were we going to poison our friend?, W. wondered. Had we brought him half way round the world just to murder him? Imagine the Chinese food with which he's familar, W. said, when our guest disappeared to the bathroom. He's bound to be an afficinado of every kind of dim sum, he said. And what have we served him? What have we done to him?

W. only hoped our friend from Taiwan (his friend from Taiwan) returned from the bathroom intact.

Still, he survived the afternoon. We survived it! And when we met up later that evening, we were determined to take our friend from Taiwan (W.'s friend from Taiwan) for a night out in Newcastle.

His new colleagues wear tracksuits to work, and have whistles around their neck, W. says. He sees them doing star-jumps outside his window.

Why have they kept him on, now his college has closed down every humanities department? Why does he remain, the last humanities lecturer in a college of sport?

Ah, but he's really on a museum piece, W. says. Only a remnant of the old university college, before the transformation.

At least there are few postgraduates left, W. says. At least he has some allies. One day, they might make a last stand, W. says. One day – not far off – they will set fire to the new gym and set fire to the tennis courts.

They only teach sport at his college now, W. says. Only sports, the students running around the track and arriving at his seminars ruddy-faced and healthy looking, with towels around their necks.

W. is having trouble impressing his students with the majesty of thinking, he says. They seem uninterested in Kant, and unengaged by Hegel. But what else can you expect when you're teaching a module on badminton ethics?

Of course, the end of philosophy has long since entered philosophy itself, W. says. We're already finished, we so-called philosophers: hasn't that always been clear? We're already doomed: haven't we always known that?

Our failures as thinkers. Our inability as readers of philosophy, as writers of philosophy. Our defeat by the present, by the forces of the present … We are the clear product of a dying subject, of a subject doomed to failure. We're only the way the end of philosophy understands itself …

We're typical, utterly typical, W. says. We're examples, instances, and nothing more than that.

But then sometimes he wonders whether the extent of our failure might set us apart. Who has failed more terribly than us?, W. wonders. Who has understood the depths of their defeat?

That's what makes us more than types, W. says. That's what singularised us, and made us unlike all the others.

In the end, only we understand the meaning of the destruction of philosophy. Only we live it, that destruction. Only as it is our lives, and nothing other than our lives.

They're going to destroy philosophy, of course, of course. They're going to loose the dogs of capitalism to tear us to pieces – of course. Philosophy is the quarry – but all humanities subjects are quarries. As all of higher education is a quarry …

Sometimes, W. is tempted by the idea that philosophy might be liberated by its destruction. Perhaps, extinguished in the universtities, it might soar into its own sky, free of every institutional encumbrance.

Perhaps there will be a new age of thinker-Cynics, former academics, living on the streets and speaking truth to power. Perhaps new Socrateses will question empty-headed yuppies in the marketplace …

But then he reminds himself that in the future, the streets will be sold off, and all public spaces privatised. He reminds himself that capitalism has no face, that the financial markets only a simmering chaos.

What kind of Cynic could speak the truth to an impersonal system? What Socrates could be a gadfly to simmering chaos?

W. remembers the first time they tried to destroy philosophy. It was the '80s, and he was a young student. He remembers the departmental closures. He remembers the demonstrations. And he remembers questions in the House of Lords about the closure of the humanities. About the closure of philosophy!

Of course, philosophy survived the cuts of the '80s, just about, W. says. They closed half the departments. They made half the teachers of philosophy redundant, or moved them across to jobs in other subject areas. It was a terrible time.

But at least the government recognised philosophy as the enemy back then, W. says. At least they understood its power. The humanities are the enemy of capitalism: that's what they understood. Philosophy is the eternal adversary of capitalism … Yes, the government understood that.

But now? The government no longer understands the humanities as an enemy, W. says. The government have nothing in particular against philosophy. They don't hate us, W. says. They don't even take us as their enemy. They have no idea that we're their enemies, W. says. They have no notion that the weapons of our thought are turned against them …

They do not oppose us on ideological grounds, or because they suspect us of subversion. They are not concerned that philosophy is training terrorists of thought. They're simply going to marketise education, W. says. They're simply going to turn the university over to the free market, just as they are turning all the sectors of the economy over to the free market. It's got nothing to do with philosophy in particular …

We can't become martyrs to philosophy, because its destroyers do not even see philosophy. We can't become warriors for philosophy, because there is no particular battle against philosophy. We cannot set ourselves on fire for philosophy, because no one would understand the meaning of our sacrifice.

We are, each of us, a kind of knot that thought wants to unloosen, W. says.

Thought is trapped in us, in each of us, he says. We need to break the vessel.

In the end, our lives are only a kind of drag on our thoughts, W. says. We must streamline ourselves with respect to thought. We must live simply, humbly, W. says. He's not sure what this means.

The philosopher only ever stumbles on an idea, W. says. Ideas can only come to you, like solitary horses who come up to be petted. And you have to win their confidence, like horses. You have to become a whisperer of thought.

Thoughts have their own law, W. says. Thoughts are always wild. You have to break them in, have to lead them into the fold.

What courage this takes! What discipline!

Really, the thinker is only ever the servant of thought, W. says.

Really, the thinker can only sink to his knees before thought, he says.

In the end, thought is a kind of assault, W. says. To think, really think, is to be struck a blow from without.

The real philosopher has philosophical dreams, W. says. Leibniz dreamt of monads, and Spinoza of infinite substance. Heidegger dreamt of the Being of beings, and Levinas of the face of the Other.

He only dreams of me, W. says. What does that mean?