The University stands for knowledge production and so its societal role for informing politics and progress cannot be underestimated. However, it has increasingly become a site for producing anxieties. In this study, I argued that a key factor is the fracturing of the institution between academia and administration. I analysed power relations between the two factions using Lacanian discourse analysis, particularly the Four Discourses framework.

My fieldwork centred on a single case study: Wageningen University. I was keen to characterise how the administrative and academic staff chose to participate in the Anthropocene debate and the newly implemented tenure track system. Both discursive anchors were identified as stoking subjectivities of anxiety in the academic that was critical of science and the university.

An important conclusion was that the critiques, complaints and demands of the academic came across as empty gesturing or passive protests at best. On the other hand, using the dynamic formulas of Lacan's Four Discourses, I understood such critiques as generating new knowledge, which were used to continue the formal function of the university as well as to legitimate the role of the administrator qua Master, or political leader of the university.