On Peripheral Philosophy

[I]f there is to be a philosophy at all,
[it must be] withdrawn from all State influence.
– Arthur Schopenhauer¹⁾Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Philosophy at the Universities,” in Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, Vol. 1, trans. E.F.J. Payne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 137-197: 180.

[E]verything interesting happens on the periphery,
outside the standard modes of “developed” existence.
– CCRU²⁾CCRU, “Communiqué Two: Message to Maxence Grunier (2001),” in CCRU Writings: 1997-2003 (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2017), (:)(:)-::(:), (:)(:).

In philosophy, the only thing that we are taught to
“expose” is a weak argument, a fallacy, or someone’s
“inferior” reasoning power.
– George Yancy³⁾George Yancy, “Whiteness and the Return of the Black Body,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19, No. 4 (2005), 215-241: 215.

Photo of the Academy Assimilating Radical Thought

While the history of anti-academic philosophy has its roots as far back as Ancient Greece and Socrates’ relentless mocking of the Sophists for whom truth was merely a fad destined to change during the next pay-cycle, its spectre has never disappeared.⁴⁾Schopenhauer, “On Philosophy at the Universities,” 153-154. Academic philosophy, further interlinked with the state in late-capitalism, has been the subject of scorn not only by those who remain unafraid of the monolith of the Academy, but also by those individuals who are always-already on the periphery. Despite becoming enlightened and supposedly shedding old religious dogmas that infected professional philosophy, we’ve managed to become nominally post-religious while replacing a visible system of control – retribution from the Church – with an invisible system of exclusion built around hegemonic attitudes and accepted norms. One must pass the Academy’s Turing test and never slip up.

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