ABSTRACT
In the university's discourse, knowledge is the over-determining factor, present in modernity as 'the hegemony of science' wherein the notion of science, rather than a figure, becomes the master. However, this over-determination finds a point of resistance in the argument for mastery itself. Mastery and forgetfulness are here revealed as the impossible truth of the discourse: the promise of power in the form of mastery and the danger of never knowing all knowledge. Knowledge mitigates the university's discourse in opposition to desire, promising itself as neutral knowledge free of vested ideological agendas or pathological interests. A criticism of knowledge-production in universities more broadly, must meet in nihilism to avoid a psychotic break or mystical rupture. This allows the university's discourse's fetishisation of knowledge to be spared the crisis of becoming meaningless and, therein, the possibility for new knowledge to be lost. But such a move is still bound to its fetish.
