Lars Iyer's Blog, page 78

I knew Reading would appal him, I tell W. How could it be otherwise? Driveways packed with Land Rovers and 4X4s ... Mock Tudor houses ... Mock Georgian ones, with pebbledash rendering and plastic windows, in great estates at the edge of everywhere ... All the styles of history, and mocking history, laughing at it. All the styles, and all at once. This is the end of the world, W. said. The eternal end.

Reading University is a campus of the suburbs, W. says. He couldn’t think of anything worse. A campus on the edge of a town, like an out-of-town leisure complex. Like a DIY superstore ...

Of course, so many of the interesting universities are buried in the suburbs, W. says. He thinks of Essex University. Of the University of Middlesex! But the suburbs of Reading are particular invidious.

It's so crowded!, he says. So congested! Labyrinthine estates with roads named after flowers, after colours, after days of the week. Hypermarkets in out-of-town retail parks. Death by Pet World! Death by Staples! And cars everywhere, cramming the roads. Big cars! Company cars, shining, pristine! BMWs, and that sort of thing. Cars and car-parks and front gardens tarmacked over and covered in cars.

The campus. Yew trees. Fields of grass. Don't be fooled!, W. says, as we follow the path. This is still Reading. He can already feel his thoughts becoming more suburban, he says.

It was Kafka that led me from the south to the north, W. knows that. It was Kafka that led me into the university. Before Kafka, there was my warehouse life. My life as a finder of UTLs, unable-to-locates, searching up and down the warehouse aisles.

I stumbled when I tried to convey it to W., which is a good sign, he says. I spoke of the castle hill, veiled in mist and darkness, and of the buzzling and whistling on the telephone line. I spoke of the illusory emptiness into which K. looked up as he crossed the wooden bridge, and of his abjection and passivity as he sought to settle his business with the authorities. What was I getting at?, W. wonders. What was I trying to say?

The world around me was unreal, I told W. that. The warehouse was unreal. The suburbs in which I had grown up, and on which the warehouse had been built, were likewise unreal. Despair reveals the truth of the world: isn’t that what was revealed to me by Kafka’s book? Despair reveals the nullity of things.

I had a vision, I told W., he remembers. I saw the workers around me like rats in a rat-run. I saw the pristine buildings around me like rat-pens, like rat-mazes. Absurdity was doing experiments on us: that’s what I saw, wasn’t it? Madness had us caged in the suburbs like laboratory rats ...

My soul was a UTL: isn't that what I saw? Life was an unable-to-locate, although no one seemed to know it but me.

The Castle made my life quiver like a compass needle. Things pointed in one direction: north! Out of the warehouse! Out of the south! North: to where dereliction, like The Castle, revealed things in their truth!  North: to where the destruction at the created order had worn through!

A chance, a promise. That's what they were given, the Essex postgraduates. Life was elsewhere ... They lived in the wrong age, and in the wrong country. They were men and women out of time and out of place.

Their ideas weren't British ideas, or at least current British ideas, W. says. Their ideas weren't commercial ideas, ideas that belong to the new reality. Ah, in another country, they thought back then, they would have been taken by the arm and treated with great politeness and interest. In religious or recently religious countries, where they still revere philosophy.

How might they have been treated in Mediterranean countries, the Essex postgraduates wondered, where they pour you wine and sit down with you to discuss ideas over olives and chorizo? Wouldn’t they have found allies and admirers in the countries of Eastern Europe — in political or recently political countries — where you can still discuss Marx over your Weissbiers, where Weil and Kierkegaard are on everyone's minds?

Of course, they all study philosophy at school, in Old Europe, the Essex postgraduates knew that. Everyone knows a little something about philosophy. Everyone has something philosophical to say. It's in their blood. In the air! It's in the aether of Old Europe, they said to each another. It's in the cafés and wine cellars. It's in the city squares and riverside parks. And can't you see it shining out in the faces of children?

Old Europe, Old Europe. But its day was passing, the Essex postgraduates knew that. And so the promise of their day was passing, they who never really knew Old Europe. Their philosophy would die unnoticed: how could it be otherwise? The ideas of Old Europe would not take root here.

They would have to fly off elsewhere, the Essex postgraduates, as dandelion seeds of thought. They would have to take root in South America, perhaps — in Argentina, which is supposed to be a very thoughtful country, a real thinking country; in Columbia, which has philosophy departments like great castles; in Uruguay, which probably already harbours thinker-friends who will take the next great leap of thought.

Or they would have to reach fertile ground in vast China, vast India, or in overcrowded Japan. Somewhere, someplace else, there would have to find the countries of thought. Somewhere beyond Old Europe, itself no longer fertile soil for the ideas of its thinkers ...

Ah, its time had come, Old Europe. It’s time was already overdue. Old Europe had already outlived itself, was already posthumous. But didn't it dream nonetheless? Didn't it send its dreams back from the other side of death? Were they its dreams, Old Europe's, the Essex postgraduates?, W. wonders. Were they the way Old Europe dreamed of coming once more to itself, now and in Essex?

Now and in Essex, now and in Essex. W. has always had a waking dream that our country might become the next country of philosophy. He's always dreamt — and he knows it's ridiculous — that something might begin in our Britain: a day, the chance of a day. That the sunrays from old Europe, from the sun-touched countries of the south, would burst through our northern clouds. That a heavenly fire would illuminate our ancient landscapes and break across our upturned faces ...

Our tears would flow, W. says. Our hearts would melt, our knees buckle. We would fall into the arms of thought. Thought would be as easy as falling. We’d play with ideas as one child with another. We’d speak to each other at last. We’d hear each other speak – at last, at last!

A chance, a promise... How they dreamed in Essex! How ardently they dreamed, the Essex postgraduates! And was it Old Europe that dreamed of itself through them? Was it Old Europe that sought to reach them from the other side of death?

Why didn't he join them, the former Essex postgraduates, who fled Britain?, W. wonders. Why did he stay behind? W. remembers a Kafka parable. - 'Where are you riding to, Master?', the servant asks. - 'I don't know. Away-From-Here, that's my destination'.

Away-From-Here: that's where the Essex postgraduates went. Away-From-Britain. That's where he should have gone, W. says: Away-From-Britain. He should have stayed overseas after his studies.

Do I know what brought him back?, W. says. Do I know why he didn't stay in France? British humour, he says. Having a laugh, British style. Taking the piss. Having the piss taken out of you. That's what he missed, W. says. They don't take the piss in France, or have the piss taken out of them in Luxembourg. He saw nothing of taking the piss in the trains of Europe, or in the European archives. No one takes the piss out of the Germans ...

Away-From-Here ... But he'll never get away, will he?, W. says. There's Canada, of course, his Canadian dream. But the Canadian universities don't even reply to his job applications. They don't even send him rejection letters ... 

He's been left behind, W. says. He and the other former Essex postgraduates, who found academic jobs instead of leaving Britain. He compromised, he says, he who had been shown that life is elsewhere, and that one should try to struggle into that elsewhere; that life flared into its fullnesss somewhere else, in another place; that life moved there like fire in fire, like weather on the sun.

Life was elsewhere. Life is elsewhere, that much is clear to him, W. says.

The Royal Observatory, high on the hill. This is where the first international terrorist incident took place, W. says, reading from a plaque. A young French anarchist attempted to blow up the Observatory, to blow up Greenwich Mean Time ...

To change time, the order of time: isn’t that the aim of any revolution?, W. says. We have to recover the dimension of possibility. The dimension of the infinite!

Time touched by eternity: he’s always found Kierkegaard’s phrase very moving, W. says. There is the time that passes, Kierkegaard argues - this instant, then that, which we merely endure, which merely carries us along. And then there is that time touched by eternity, Kierkegaard says, which allows past, present and future assume their true role in our lives as phases of development. Once time has touched eternity, we no longer simply persist in time, but deepen and grow. We come to exist temporally, living towards a future that we earn by our deepening, earn by our growth: that's what Kierkegaard argues.

Time touched by eternity: isn’t that what is meant by revolutionary time?, W. wonders. Doesn’t the time of revolution turn in its light as a waterwheel turns in glinting water? The revolution means the shattering of politics, W. says. It means the destruction of business as usual. Isn’t that why the French revolutionaries renamed the days of the week? Isn’t that why they remade the calendar?

Tarrday, that’s we should rename Monday, W. says. Krasznahorkaiday: it’s a bit of a mouthful, but that’s what Tuesday should become. And Weilday instead of Wednesday. Cohenday instead of Thursday. And Rosenzweigday, for the day of the Sabbath. Saturday can be Deleuzeday, and Sunday: Kierkegaard-day: why not?, W. says.

The view over London. The City, across the river, which its great towers to Mammon. The domes of Greenwich Naval College. The low rise estates on this side of the river to which they moved the poor of London, when they demolished their houses.

Sometimes, W. longs for a great explosion in the sky. For a nearby star to burst across the heavens. For a comet's head, blazing towards us. Why is it easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism?

There are turning points in our life, W. says. Conversions. Sometimes we’re called, he says. Sometimes we’re allowed to become better than we are. God knows, that’s what we need.

What set of events would let us come into our own?, W. wonders. He sees us in his mind’s eye, battling our demons in our monks' cells. He sees us with a band of hermits, heading out into the desert.

To disappear into a larger movement!: isn’t that what he wants?, W. says. To be dissolved anonymously into some great work of goodness ... He'd have to bring me with him, that's the problem, W. says. I'd be trotting alongside him, tugging at his habit, and wondering when we could stop for lunch.

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 questions says. Or, better: Fuck off, I'm eating.

I’m antisocial: that much is clear. Reclusive. He’s seen the expression on my face during longer conference presentations. He seen the wild desire for freedom that burns in my eyes. I want to vault the walls! To scream! To escape! And doesn’t he want to escape with me, a whelk on the side of a whale?

I find the company of academics intolerable, W. says. Unbearable! And isn’t he the same? Doesn’t he share something of my dread, and my urge to flee? Isn’t he also becoming something of an academic savage?

But there are other ways of being-together, W. says, that's what I have to understand. Political friendship: do I have any sense of that? Of what it means to band together against a common enemy? Of what it means to share a commitment, to be part of collective work, free from all personal ambition?

W. remembers what Tronti recalls of the early days of operaismo, of sharing ‘a common knot of problems as “lived thought”’. In their meetings, Tronti says, ‘we would spend half the time talking, the rest laughing. We brought together a fine old madhouse’. Political joy; political laughter, W. says: can I imagine that?

Loyalty. That's another Canadian virtue, W. says. He recalls the dog they had to leave behind when his family left Canada for England. She was half-wolf, he says. Half wild! She starved herself to death, she missed them so much. She let herself die! She died for want of love. It's tragic.

Dogs are bred for love, W. says. They're bred for loyalty, over thousands and thousand of generations.

His political visions always involve dogs, W. says. Oh, he knows how much I dislike them. It’s a bad sign of me, he says. The dog-despiser is also a life-despiser. He knows it must be some Hindu thing.

The frozen north: that's where the purest kind of politics might be found, W. says. It’s only with other people that you can withstand the Arctic winter. Only huddled together for warmth – and what is politics but a huddling together for warmth?

W. speaks of the far north of Scandinavia, and the far north of Canada; of white expanses and trackless forests; of swirling snow and frost flowers spreading on the window. He speaks of the warm hearths of the far north. Of oil lamps hanging with crystal prisms. He speaks of Canadian laughter amidst the glittering light. Of Canadian merriment during the endless winters!

Canadians leave their doors unlocked in the frozen north, W. says. They leave their hearts open! The law of northern hospitality means that you have to take anyone in who knocks at the door. It's exactly like the Law of the Stranger in the Bible, which Celan found so moving: 'The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as a home-born, and thou shalt love him as thyself'. Unconditional hospitality: that's what the Canadian house offers. Hospitality without condition!

You can know nothing of human society until you stamp the snow from your boots in a Canadian hallway, W. says. Until you've been downed a glass of vodka at a Canadian table. The storm gathers outside; but you are inside. The winds blow from the far north; but you sit warm by the fire. The snow lies deep; but you drink and sing with your Canadian hosts long into the night ...

Leuchars. Invergowrie. The farther north we go, W. says, the more civilised it becomes. The more socialist! Scotland is the refuge of socialism, for W. says. Think of Red Clydeside! Think of the Radical War!

Scotland is closer to the social democracies of Scandinavia, that’s what does it, W. says. Scotland breathes Scandinavian air. He’s always been impressed by Scandinavian social democracy, W. says. High public spending! The redistribution of wealth! Universal health care! Early retirement! That’s what civilisation means, W. says.

The only future for Scotland is to dissolve the Union, W. says. To dissolve it, and then set itself adrift like the stone raft of Saramago’s novel, heading north, only north ...