Decapitation theory and university management: some notes towards the derangement of academic life

This paper explores what it might mean to ‘behead’ the university. It suggests that the creation of a demonstrable void at the top of the organisation would render notions of leadership further down inoperable and have knock-on effects that would disrupt practices of research and teaching, and ultimately call the university itself into question. These ideas are developed by exploring the nature of the ‘headless community’ Georges Bataille once envisaged, encapsulated in André Masson’s iconic image of the acéphalic (or headless) man, together with a discussion of the cephalophore, or head carrier, which appears in Christian iconography.