Hyperobjects, Fractals, and Ruinous Connections in the University: Following Threads of Thought

This article uses three concepts prised from their environmental contexts and juxtaposed together in the unfamiliar terrain of university critique. Two interrelated ambitions motivate this approach. The first, is to sketch emerging ecologies of university landscapes that frame publicness and public good in relation to intertwined historical, living, material “worlds” of academia. The second, is to engage with what “public good” could mean in a post-anthropocentric context where a more relational and spacious approach decentres the individual human as master and controller of their environment. Timothy Morton’s notion of the hyperobject is read through Susan Wright’s critique of university reform, where no matter the geographical or cultural context, the effects on the idea of the “university” remains largely the same. Marilyn Strathern’s ideas around the fractal are then traversed in the paper to demonstrate the partial and relational dimensions to the university. Finally, the paper brings in Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s ideas around university landscapes and their surprising capacities for strange and unpredictable connections and potentiality. The metaphor of the “thread” is woven throughout the article, installing a methodological approach that is both performatively “knotty” and intricately entangled in ideas around the university and where and how public good can emerge.