All that reading, and yet we still talk rubbish

I spent yesterday in the library, chin-wagging in the company of Brn, a self-confessed 'bergsonismian'. I had just been reading the 'Immediate Structure of the For-itself' chapter from Being and Nothingness - what an exhausting business! I am rather fond of Sartre, but by the end of that bit, in which he tries to construe 'negation' in every possible way, I was fantasizing about Bataillean excess. It was beginning to feel like the nothingness is not in my mind but in my brain... Dear god, I'll even put up with writing essays on Deleuze and Nietzsche all year to avoid that special Sartrean emptiness. (Those two are all about positivity and overflowing, right?)

Anyway, Brn was chuckling about how there are so many new continental philosophy students in our department this year, but that the philosophy of mind staff contingent keeps on growing. How could it be that those ubiquitous 'market forces' that dominate British life suddenly lose their strength when it comes to philosophy student-staff ratios? I think "bizarre" is the word he used.

Naturally, the discussion smoothly progressed on to how far away from here I am going to try to take myself next year. Brn mentioned that Newcastle had something of a continental slant but that the department was situated in Physics (something about a large donation). All I could add to this was that I knew of one lecturer there, and that he was interested in that legendary physicist, Maurice Blanchot. Then I recalled meeting one of our new MA students, who came from Newcastle, and that his big interest was, um, Eastern philosophy.
In any case, this startling jumble of conflicting information was the source of much puzzlement; Brn got especially excited about the possibilities for thought: "Eskimoes and African philosophy" he mused.