1.
Don't give us a thing, we won't be grateful. Don't give us anything, we'll spit it back in your face. There's no point in bringing us into the fold, we don't belong there. You mean well, you'd like to bring us in, you'd like to make it less exclusive, but really there's no point, as we don't belong inside. You are generosity itself, you want to help, to open things up, to allow a new group of people to get in, but it's a bad idea, we don't belong there, we'd only spoil things for you, we'd only throw what you give us back in your face, we'd only resent you for what you tried to do.
You say you want nothing from us, but in fact you want a great deal. You say we can come in just as we are, but you know, don't you, that we don't belong inside, but should stay outside, with our own kind. You want nothing from us, we can come as we are, but we belong outside, not inside, and to join you would mean we'd have to give up too much, because we'd have to give up everything we are.
You say nothing need change, that we are welcome as we are, that we bring our own insights, our own perspective, that this is valuable, this is already a contribution, but don't you understand that this same insight, this same perspective is what confirms for us that we do not belong inside? You tell us it is about inclusivity, about new voices and fresh perspectives, but don't you see that as soon as we cross the threshold our perspective is no longer fresh and that our voices are no longer new?
You want to include us, it is true, and we appreciate the gesture, but if we accepted we'd come to resent you, it would lead inevitably to resentment. At first, it is true, we appreciated your generosity, we liked the gesture, but really you shouldn't give us a thing, we won't be grateful, we'll spit it back in your face. Because on the one hand, there is your generosity, your desire to do good, to include us at last, to take account of us at last, and on the other, there is the impossibility of taking account of us, the impossibility of admission. On the one hand, your generosity and on the other hand, our ungenerosity, on the one hand your grace and on the other, our resentment, our hatred.
True, some of us may look like we've fitted in, some of us, like well-trained apes, may look as though we belong, but this is only because we wanted to escape unemployment and temporary work, only because we wanted a resting place to draw breath and look around and see where we were. But how can this last when we know we do not belong, that the inside is the inside and the outside is the outside, and no one should have brought us in, no one should have granted us admission? How when the inside is there precisely to keep us out, when the inside defines itself by our exclusion, when the very sense of the inside depends on our being outside?
2.
The inside is inside and the outside is outside, this was how it always was, until that period, which thankfully is nearly over, when a few of us from the outside were brought inside. Yes, there was the inside and the outside, it was as it always was but for those few of us who were admitted, who were allowed to come in, though it was clear we did not belong, who were invited in and for whom place was made. Yes, there was a change in the academy, for a time the rules changed, we were sought after, and we were supposed to bring a fresh perspective to the academy, to open things up and we were welcome for that reason.
Why didn't they understand it would poison them, those who were inside, and poison us, who were made to come from the outside to the inside? Why didn't they understand that they offered us would taunt us, that what they gave we would throw back immediately, that we would only resent them for their kindnesses, for the grants they gave us? Why didn't they understand we accepted the invitation only to pause, only to rest and catch our breath, and that as soon as we did, resentment would fill us and we would resent what we had been given and those who gave it to us?
Worst was that while we'd lived in ignorance of our exclusion, now we were aware of it, now that awareness was all there was. Worst that we knew our exclusion even as we were included, we knew our exclusion by way of that inclusion. Now the way in was the way out; the place of repose was exposed on four sides to the outside, there was only the outside into which we were held even though we were inside. For a time we were resentful, we hated everything, but over time, resentment fell away from us. Even resentment was impossible. We carried the outside with us, even here. Even inside, there was the outside, and here more than ever.
For a time, we consoled ourselves by imitating others, we would write articles and books, we could teach like the others and administer like the others. For a time, we were content to imitate others, content to do as others did, even though we knew for all that we were still apes, even though our labours were bent on imitation. But we knew one day that the ruse would be up, our imitation would be revealed for what it is, for what were our books and articles compared to the ones of those who belonged inside? Yes, for a time, it may have appeared we had promise, that we were producing interesting work, but one day we knew the game would be up, it would come to an end, we would be revealed for what we are, it would be revealed to us, as if for the first time, that we did not belong, that the inside was inside and we belonged outside.
How could it be otherwise? If it was by a kind of mistake we found admittance, that mistake would reveal itself to us, and to us first of all, we would know our station was ours only by mistake, and that the position in which we found ourselves was above all not ours, that it could not be ours.
How could it be otherwise? They knew as we did not know how to write and how to speak, they knew how to dress and how to hold doors open for others, they knew how to eat in public and how to drink in public, they knew what to say and what not to say, they knew how to walk without loping, they knew how to show polite interest and involve others, they knew how to speak in complete sentences, they knew all of this without knowing it, it was clear to them without their ever being aware of its clarity, except when, perhaps, we so obviously failed to dress properly and to hold doors open for others, except when our guard was down and we failed to show polite interest and to involve others, except then when we fell short of what had been asked of us, when we came up against the limits of our capacity to imitate, except when our apishness was revealed for what it was - then, perhaps, they knew what we were not and what they possessed, then, with disappointment, they had to admit the experiment was a failure and we had disappointed them, that it had been impossible from the first and we had no chance of fitting in.
They knew then, our benefactors, what they possessed and we did not possess, they knew what was theirs by birth and what was not theirs by birth, knew what they had, our benefactors, without knowing that they had it. Yes, they saw how every line we wrote and every line we read confirmed our non-belonging, that everything we read and everything we wrote confirmed what we were not and could not be.
Our feeble talk of ethics-and-politics was only our way of carving our name on the great edifices of culture; our half-Marxism was only our way of scrawling a resentful little signature across those great, beautiful edifices, whose beauty, in truth, we admired and aspired to, but that we could only spoil with our apish hands as soon as we tried to add our names to the great lists of professors and readers and senior lecturers, to those oeuvre-builders, to those of long careers and lengthy schooling who had all of Western culture at their beck and call.
How could we add our nasty little scrawl to that long list of professors and readers and senior lecturers? How could we add our resentful mark to those who by their modesty and meticulousness, had built great oeuvres? How could we think our portraits would join the portraits of others who worked patiently and meticulously, who worked step by patient step, pausing to make sure the first step was taken, that a step was secure, before a second step was taken?
In truth we who were once too wild, would be shown by our portrait to be only dull-eyed apes, diminished beasts. How difficult it was for us to cross from instant to instant! How difficult to muster our thoughts! We were scattered across the day, our attention was caught and held by a million things, our apish attention was hypnotised by our many tasks and we conserved nothing of our strength. How disappointing we were to our benefactors! How ashamed they were of the way we turned out! They gave up and turned from us; our office doors went unopened and we laboured in obscurity. Years passed in dust and darkness.
3.
The cleverest among us, the most cunning, argued our benighted position was everything, that our entrapment was also the condition of our release, the promise of our freedom. The cleverest supposed this promise lay in our forced apishness, in the imitation by which we lived; that ours was a position of critique, that we exposed the great lie for what it was, that ours was the living refutation of the great lie of the academe. Apes emailed apes, apes phoned other apes and for a while, a new excitement was felt: perhaps ours was the position from which something could be born, perhaps we, who had fallen so far below need, who remained outside, could draw on a freedom that was uniquely ours. The academe would have failed in us, it would have come to an end with us, that was our ethics-and-politics, that was our chatter of ethics-and-politics and the coming revolution.
But what we possessed we did so because of our weakness and because of our failure. What we had we had by way of weariness and boredom, and we lost it by way of weariness and boredom. Failure did not become victory, weakness did not become strength and we apes stopped emailing one another and greeting one another, and withdrew into mute apishness and mute despair. We hadn't the strength, we hadn't the initative. Who would rise from our ranks and lead us when our positions were so precarious and our contracts so short? Sometimes resentment would cross our faces, sometimes wildness would fill our eyes, but we were tame apes, and we dreamt not of the savannah, but of the books we would write in imitation of others.