Literary Philosophy

We build this work from the memory of the time we stumbled into tulips at city hall. As guard sirens fled off into the night, we wondered, “Maybe we can borrow some.” We ripped handfuls from the ground and ran. “Don’t worry,” we said, “they are too busy to  catch  us  stealing  tulips.”  Likewise,  we  get  away  with  this  useless  project  because others are busy doing useful work: exigent, coherent, important work. We support much of  that  busyness,  and  at  the  same  time  wonder  what  is  lost  with  all  that  attention towards usefulness. What we offer here, through a hybrid of reflective, poetic, essayistic and scholarly forms, may be an attempted escape from the obligations of scholarship. It may be indulgent. It may tell the reader nothing, or only what the reader already knows. Yet  it  is  oriented  towards  an  enduring  promise.  This  is  the  promise  of  a  literary experience, understood as a kind of resonance, ineffable primarily, but nevertheless one that  matters.  Such  a  promise  is  found  in  the  power  and  possibility  of  story,  through poetic lines that must be broken and conceptual tethers left incommensurable. We enter this space of breaking and unfurling through an inquiry into use.The question of use and uselessness is one way of holding human contradictions in  both  hands.  By  this  we  mean  that  we  make  and  leave  space  for  literary  and philosophical  inquiries  considered  useless—in  that  they  do  not  resolve  anything—but nevertheless matterful. We suggest that readers meander these curated pages as they would  meander  through  an  art  exhibition  or  a  museum.  Within  a  literary  exhibition  one can  wander  through  pages,  spaces,  and  ideas.  Pause.  Dwell.  Think.  We  curate  a literary home beyond the demands of making something of use and we invite the reader to sit with us. As with an exhibition, possibility cannot be controlled for and so we exist in potentiality  acknowledging  both  its  positive  and  negative  potential.  Through  our  use, misuse,  and  abuse  of  literature  and  philosophy,  we  make  ourselves  a  home  in  a possibility  that  can  only  be  offered,  not  demanded.  We  manifest  this  literary  home through fragments of philosophy evoked through a series of microfictions. As scholars, learners, teachers, and writers we are often asked to defend what our writing does. And it is implicitly suggested that knowledge creation is the result. What is the use of a work that cannot promise new knowledge? Literary knowledge may only be one gorgeous possible ordering. It is a practice which produces a kind of knowledge which is no knowledge, which is useless.  If we must answer what it is that our writing does we suppose that—if anything—it offers up fictions for philosophizing. We explore a home for this work in scholarly contexts which too often find it useless, which is to say we position uselessness as a concept of value for our work as scholars, writers, and teachers. In the end we name no new uses but fiction; we steal tulips.