The Death of the University

The image of dark academe is that of a rotting cadaver. It is depicted in the epigraph to this book, which comes from the chapter of Jean Baudrillard’s 1981 book, Simulacra and Simulation (Simulacres et simulation) entitled “The Spiraling Cadaver.” Here Baudrillard briefly directs his theses on life, death, and the death drive toward the university. As we shall see, according to him, not only do life and death undermine capitalism, but once the symbolic enters the systems of capital, catastrophe is unavoidable. In terms of higher education, this catastrophe entails the death of the university, which will be the topic of this chapter.