The Senior Common Room at St Anselm's
The afternoon sunlight had finally defeated the rain and now lay across the common room carpet like an uninvited but tolerated guest.
Professor Quillibrace was reading quietly.
Miss Stray was making notes.
Mr Blottisham was smiling.
This immediately alarmed both of them.
"What has happened?" asked Quillibrace.
"I understand this one."
"I feared as much."
Blottisham tapped the paper triumphantly.
"Commands."
"Yes."
"Simple."
Quillibrace closed his eyes briefly.
Miss Stray looked concerned.
Blottisham continued.
"Questions are complicated. Statements are apparently lifelong commitments. Offers are biscuits suffering from modal uncertainty."
"A fair summary," said Quillibrace.
"But commands?" said Blottisham. "Commands are obvious."
"Go on," said Quillibrace.
"They tell people what to do."
A silence settled over the room.
At length Quillibrace asked:
"And when they do not do it?"
Blottisham blinked.
"Then the command fails."
"Does it cease to have been a command?"
"No."
"Interesting."
Blottisham frowned.
Quillibrace continued.
"Suppose I say, 'Close the door.'"
"Very well."
"And suppose you refuse."
"A regrettable hypothetical."
"Yet suppose it."
"Then the door remains open."
"Does the command disappear?"
"No."
"Does the asymmetry disappear?"
Blottisham hesitated.
"No."
"Does the interaction continue to be organised by what has occurred?"
"Yes."
Quillibrace folded his hands.
"Then perhaps the command is not identical with compliance."
Miss Stray smiled.
"The command structures something even when it fails."
Blottisham looked mildly betrayed.
"You've both rehearsed this."
"We have not," said Quillibrace.
"We merely read the same paper."
Blottisham turned back to the text.
"I still think commands are about obligation."
Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.
"Transferred obligation?"
"Yes."
"Like a parcel?"
Blottisham stared.
"Must everything become a parcel?"
"So far, everything has improved once it ceased being one."
Miss Stray laughed softly.
Quillibrace continued.
"If obligation is transferred, where was it beforehand?"
Blottisham sighed.
"Not this again."
"An important methodological question."
"I had the obligation."
"And then?"
"I gave it to someone else."
"Excellent."
"And?"
"And now they have it."
Quillibrace nodded thoughtfully.
"Like a hat."
"A hat?"
"Or a briefcase."
"I don't know why I come here."
"Tradition, mostly."
Miss Stray intervened.
"The interesting point is that commands remain active without successful uptake."
"Exactly," said Quillibrace.
"Which means the important thing cannot be the transfer."
Blottisham frowned.
"So what is being structured?"
"Responsiveness," said Miss Stray.
"The possibility of action," said Quillibrace.
"The relevance of continuation," said Miss Stray.
"The narrowing of trajectories," added Quillibrace.
Blottisham rubbed his temples.
"You're making it sound like traffic engineering."
Quillibrace looked delighted.
"That is unexpectedly good."
"It is?"
"Indeed."
Miss Stray nodded.
"A command doesn't drive the car."
"No," said Quillibrace.
"It reorganises the road."
Blottisham stared.
A long pause followed.
Then he said:
"I wish you hadn't said that."
"Why?"
"Because now it makes sense."
Quillibrace appeared pleased.
"A rare occupational hazard."
Blottisham looked down again.
"What I don't understand is authority."
"Many people don't," said Quillibrace.
"No, I mean here."
Miss Stray leaned forward.
"The paper is making a very specific move."
"Which is?"
"Authority isn't something a person possesses."
Blottisham immediately objected.
"Of course it is."
Quillibrace smiled faintly.
"An admirable nineteenth-century position."
"The Headmaster possesses authority."
"Does he possess it while asleep?"
"Yes."
"On holiday?"
"Yes."
"While accidentally locked in a stationery cupboard?"
Blottisham paused.
Miss Stray looked interested.
"An increasingly plausible scenario," she observed.
Quillibrace continued.
"The point is that authority becomes visible through relations."
"So it doesn't belong to anyone?"
"It belongs to the configuration."
Blottisham groaned.
"Everything belongs to the configuration."
"An encouraging trend."
A silence followed.
Then Miss Stray said:
"What I find interesting is that commands seem to occupy the edge of something."
Quillibrace nodded.
"The asymmetry frontier."
Blottisham pointed accusingly.
"That phrase sounds like a government report."
"It does rather."
"What does it mean?"
Miss Stray considered.
"I think it means the point at which reciprocity is stretched as far as it can go without disappearing."
Quillibrace smiled.
"Beautifully put."
Blottisham frowned.
"So commands are not pure control."
"No."
"Not pure authority."
"No."
"Not pure obedience."
"No."
"Then what are they?"
Quillibrace looked out the window for a moment.
"A highly constrained form of co-constitution."
Blottisham sighed deeply.
"There ought to be a law against answers like that."
"An intriguing command," said Quillibrace.
Blottisham opened his mouth.
Then stopped.
Miss Stray looked from one to the other.
"Well?"
Blottisham folded his arms.
"I refuse."
Quillibrace nodded approvingly.
"Excellent."
"Excellent?"
"You have just demonstrated the theory."
For perhaps the first time all afternoon, nobody knew whether that counted as compliance. 🍷🙂
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