Free Dogma by Lars Iyer

flat on the floor. There it is, drunk as we are drunk and throwing up over the side of the bridge …
    But thought is here, right here, very close to us, that’s the thing, W. says. Thought’s here, it must be desperate. There must be no one else for thought to hang out with. We’re its last friends, W. says. We’re the last friends of thought  …
    In his imagination, W. says, our offices in our cities at the edges of this country are like the Dark Age monasteries on the edge of Europe, keeping the old knowledge alive. In his imagination, our teaching is samizdat, outlawed because it is dangerous, the secret police infiltrating our lectures and preparing to take us away. In W.’s imagination, the enemies of thought are tracking us even here, even in Oxford. Especially in Oxford. They’re watching. They invited us here to keep us close. To press us close to the bosom of Oxford. To suffocate us. To suck the life out of us …
    But in reality, W. knows no one is watching. No one cares anymore, that’s the truth of it, W. says. No one’s on the look out. There was no guard on the door of St Hilda’s College. There’s no one who could regard us as interlopers.
    It’s like Rome after it was sacked by the Barbarians, says W. They’ve come and gone, the Barbarians, the wreckers of civilisation. And now there’s no guard; there’s nothing to protect. We’re inside—yes; but that is only a sign that there is no longer a distinction between inside and outside.
    We’ve got away with nothing; our stupidity is in plain view. It doesn’t matter; it’s irrelevant to everyone. No one’s worried about our credentials, because there are no credentials. There’s only luck. And opportunism. Were we lucky?, Iask him.—‘Undoubtedly’. And were we opportunists?—‘We were too stupid to be opportunists’.
    He sees it, W. says, like an enormous fact. A great fact, like the wide sky, that says: it doesn’t matter . Over the Bodelian Library, it says: it’s all over . Over the college quadrangles, it says: it’s finished. You’re too late . Over the gowned academics, it says: Gibt sie auf! Gibt sie auf! Gibt sie auf!
    The gate stands open. It’s nearly falling from its hinges. And beyond it, other doors, or gaps in walls where there were once doors, or rubble where there were once walls, or mounds of dust where there was once rubble. And beyond that: empty space without stars. Nothing at all.

 
    Rolling thunder. Lightning flashing in the summer sky. There’s trouble at his college, W. says.
    The rumour is they’re going to close down all the humanities, every course. The college is going to specialise in sport instead. They’ve brought in a team of consultants to manage the redundancies, W. says.
    Oh, some staff will be kept on, they’ve said that. The college needs some academic respectability. They’ll probably make him a professor of badminton ethics , W. says. He’ll probably be teaching shot put metaphysics …
    But everyone will have to reapply for their jobs, that’s the rumour. They’re going to cut the workforce in half. It’s Hobbesian, W. says. There’s going to be a war of all against all.
    How peaceful it was, his college, when he first arrived! Colleagues greeted each other warmly. They sat out in the quadrangle, taking tea and discussing their scholarship. No one taught for more than a couple of hours a week.
    Then the decline began. Teaching hours went up.Colleagues became busier; there was less time to talk. Scholars worked alone, with their office doors closed. But still they waved at one another across the quadrangle. Still, when they had time, they visited each other’s offices for tea.
    But things fell further. Colleagues did nothing but teach, W. says. No one spoke. No one took tea. Scholars—what scholars were left—worked alone, talking to no one, keeping their insights to themselves. The quadrangle was silent.
    And now? Colleagues have forgotten what scholarship is. They’ve