ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is on the arrival of institutional turbulence as a result of student and worker protest. It describes turbulence arising from ruthless demand on the institution as object, and the destruction/survival cycle that it sets in motion. The period described is located in the eye of the storm, during the collision with the object, in the hallucinatory world of object relating, before object usage is achieved. It will explore local effects on ordinary going-on-being within individuals, each negotiating their own relationship to the ruthless demand. It also broadens this frame of reference to consider ruthlessness, destruction and survival in the working of standing committees attending to routine academic, student and staffing business, such as registration for courses, uploading of marks, payments to departments, release of funding for research, and examinations. It tries to make sense of how organizational turbulence spreads outwards, through institutional structures, as well as inwards, into the emotional lives of the individuals who animate those structures. It looks at the ways in which a demand that an institution re-examine its habits, taken-for-granted membranes of object relating that have held a particular fantasy of itself together, disrupts work, causing deferrals and interruptions, and creates the need for emergency decision-making and new regulations.
