Lars Iyer - Dogma

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 forgotten anything but teaching, endless, remorseless teaching. Former scholars snarl at each other in the college corridors. And there are rumours that the library will be torched, and that they’ll set up a gallows in the quadrangle. It’s like something out of Dante, W. says.

The war is beginning, W. says. The armies are assembling. It’s as though the awful Hindu stories I tell are coming true. He feels like Arjuna in the great battle of the Mahabharata , W. says. He feels like the leader of the Pandavan armies on the Kurukshetra plains, facing his friends and relatives on the opposing side.

Uncle was set against nephew, that’s what I told him, isn’t it? W. says, pupil against teacher, friend against friend: the battle had torn families apart, old friendships asunder … Arjuna threw aside his bow and sank to his knees, I told W. Why should he fight? he cried to his friend, Krishna. Why should he go on? And that’s what W. wails when he’s with me: why should he fight? Why should he go on?

W. is going to commence hostilities with scholar-brothers from the old days, when his college was a place of reputation, when the department of theology and philosophy was the jewel in its crown. He’s heading into battle with scholar-sisters from the times when the college was a place of sanctuary for academics from overseas: when they took in scholar-refugees, scholar-survivors from war-torn countries, giving them an office in which to work, and a pass for the library.

W.’s about to skirmish with fellow scholars of ancient civilisations, fellow men and women of the archive, who have spent their lives travelling from place of learning to place of learning. He’s pitted against scholars mesmerised by Old Europe, as he is. Mesmerised by Kafka, mesmerised by Spinoza. Mesmerised by the French and the German and the ancient Greeks …

Krishna comforted Arjuna by granting him a divine vision, W. recalls. Arjuna was allowed to witness Krishna’s celestial form: to see the entire cosmos turning in his body. Arjuna saw the light of God, the Lord of Yoga, as a fire that burns to consume all things. He saw a million divine figures in the fire, and the manifold contours of the universe united as one …

‘What does your celestial form look like?’, says W. ‘Go on, show me’. Actually, he thinks he’s already seen it, W. says, or parts of it. My vast, white belly. My flabby arms. The trousers that billow round my ankles …

And my dancing, my terrible dancing. It’s the end of the cosmos that W. sees in my dancing. He sees the destruction of the divine figures, and of the manifold contours of the universe. He sees primordial chaos , he says. He sees the putting out of the stars. He sees the extinguishing of the sun, and the night swallowing the day. He sees the opposite of the act of creation, the opposite of cosmogony …

‘ The floodgates of the sky broke open ’, he says, quoting Genesis . He sees ‘ the waters of the great Deep ’, and ‘ the Dragon of the Sea ’, he says, quoting Isaiah .

How does the Mahabharata end? W. asks. And darkness fell over India , I remind him. — ‘You Hindus have a great sense of decline. And darkness fell over India … ’, he sighs. ‘That’s the way to end an epic’.

Our inaugural Dogma presentation was on Kafka — the room was packed, and W. spoke very movingly of his encounter with The Castle in a Wolverhampton library. I spoke (very ineptly, W. said afterwards) about my encounter with The Castle in a Winnersh Triangle warehouse. — ‘What were you on about?’ But Dogmatists stick together; a question for one is a question for the other. You have to stand back to back and fight to the last. Did we win? We lost, says W., but we did so gloriously.

Our second Dogma presentation concerned friendship as a condition of thought. W. stole half his argument from Paolo Virno, and the other half from Mario Tronti. Virno and Tronti write of their ideas as though they were categories in Aristotle, W. says. He admires that. W. reminds me of the sixth Dogma rule: always claim the ideas of others as your own.

Forming an ultra-Dogmatist splinter group, I spoke not of friendship in general, but of my friendships (my friendships with nutters and weirdos, W. says.)

W. is prompted to add another rule to Dogma: Dogma is personal . Always give examples from your own experience. No: the presentation in its entirety should begin and end with an account of your own experience. Of turning points! Trials! Of great struggles and humiliations! My life lends itself particularly well to such a rule, W. says. — ‘The horror of your life’.

Our third Dogma presentation was perhaps our pinnacle. Did we weep? Very nearly. Did we tear open our shirts? It was close. Did we speak with the greatest seriousness we could muster — with world-historical seriousness? Of course! And did we take questions for one another like a relay team, passing the baton effortlessly to and fro? Without doubt!

W. spoke of nuns; I, of monks. He spoke about dogs; I, about children. We thought the very stones would weep. We thought the sky itself would rain down in tears. W. invents a new Dogma rule: always speak of nuns, and dogs.

In our fourth Dogma presentation, we spoke of love, the greatest topic of all, says W. But there can be no love in the modern world, W. says, there can be no such thing as love. I spoke of my years with the monks, of divine love and mundane love. I spoke of agape and eros . And then W. spoke of philein : the greatest kind of love, he said.