Werden wir denn nie schweigen dürfen? Muß unsere Feder immer wieder in Streit verwickelt werden? Und wird uns nie der Tag der Ruhe kommen?

 Petrarca: Büchlein von seiner und vieler Leute Unwissenheit

                                 dt. Jena, 1910 S.128

UNIVERSITÄT BOCKWURST

THE BOCKWURST MANIFESTO

A German Counter-University for the Age of Managed Intelligence

Welcome to Universität Bockwurst.

We are a German university.

We are not accredited.

We have no rector, no senate, no quality-management office, no diversity officer, no excellence strategy and, as far as we know, no impact.

We nevertheless teach.

Our subjects include literature, philosophy, history, sociology, philology, the history of ideas, academic bullshit and the increasingly difficult question of whether anyone is still able to distinguish between them.

I. AGAINST THE UNIVERSITY OF EVERYTHING

The contemporary university has become extraordinarily efficient at producing things.

Degrees.

Modules.

Learning outcomes.

Research profiles.

Networks.

Keywords.

Projects.

Reports.

Applications.

And, above all, texts.

The production of texts has become so efficient that the question has changed.

It is no longer:

Can this be written?

It is:

Why should anyone write it?

Universität Bockwurst regards this as an urgent question.

II. FLATUS MACHINAE

The old scholastic philosophers spoke of flatus vocis:

a mere breath of the voice,

a word without substantial reality.

We propose a new category:

FLATUS MACHINAE

the breath of the machine.

The machine speaks.

The machine summarizes.

The machine paraphrases.

The machine produces an introduction, a conclusion, a literature review and, if required, a paragraph on the “complex interplay” of several factors.

The machine is tireless.

The machine is polite.

The machine has no tenure.

The machine never asks for a sabbatical.

The machine does not complain about teaching loads.

The machine produces precisely what the university increasingly demands:

text without necessity.

This does not mean that machines are useless.

Quite the opposite.

They are extraordinarily useful.

That is precisely the problem.

III. THE QUESTION OF THE AUTHOR

Universität Bockwurst is therefore not interested in the childish opposition:

human = authentic
machine = inauthentic

The history of literature is much more complicated.

Authors have always borrowed.

They have translated.

They have imitated.

They have quoted.

They have plagiarised.

They have written under pseudonyms.

They have spoken through masks.

They have invented ancient authors who never existed.

They have made the dead speak.

They have attributed modern thoughts to Aristophanes, Plato, Homer, Virgil and others.

The question is not whether a text has a human fingerprint.

The question is:

Who is responsible for the thought?

And perhaps the even more difficult question:

What thought is actually taking place?

IV. THE RETURN OF PHILOLOGY

Against the automated production of academic prose we propose an old-fashioned remedy:

read the text.

Not its metadata.

Not its citation count.

Not its impact factor.

Not its discourse.

Not its reception history before reading the work itself.

The text.

Its words.

Its syntax.

Its forms.

Its errors.

Its silences.

Its jokes.

Its contradictions.

Its failures.

Its strange survivals.

Philology begins where the summary ends.

V. AGAINST THE GREAT DIGEST

Modern scholarship has perfected the art of reduction.

Everything can be:

summarised,

contextualised,

operationalised,

visualised,

digitised,

quantified,

networked,

mapped,

modelled,

and finally presented in a PowerPoint.

Universität Bockwurst asks the unfashionable question:

What disappears?

Perhaps knowledge is not simply information waiting for better transmission.

Perhaps mediation changes the thing mediated.

Perhaps the remainder matters.

Perhaps the part that cannot be summarised is sometimes the most interesting part.

VI. THE UNIVERSITY AS COMEDY

The university has always contained an element of theatre.

Professors perform expertise.

Students perform attention.

Committees perform deliberation.

Committees then perform the performance of deliberation.

Academic language performs seriousness.

Universität Bockwurst merely removes the curtain.

We therefore recommend:

more theatre, less theatre pretending not to be theatre.

VII. POSTBULLS()HIT

The contemporary academic world has produced an enormous literature about discourse, performativity, mediation, positionality, reflexivity, transformation and complexity.

Universität Bockwurst has produced a simpler category:

POSTBULLS()HIT

The post indicates that the bullshit has become historical.

The parentheses indicate that the bullshit is computationally processable.

The final hit indicates that somebody has pressed “submit”.

We do not claim that every academic text is bullshit.

That would be unfair.

We merely observe that bullshit has acquired an academic infrastructure.

VIII. HISTORY WITHOUT THE GREAT MEN

Our seminars therefore include Julius Caesar.

But not quite the Caesar you remember.

Brecht asks about:

The Business Affairs of Mr Julius Caesar.

The change of title is decisive.

Not:

Who was Caesar?

But:

What were Caesar's business affairs?

And then:

Who worked for them?

Roman history becomes economic history.

Economic history becomes social history.

Social history becomes a history of labour.

And suddenly the marble statue has become a balance sheet.

Universität Bockwurst considers this progress.

IX. LITERATURE WITHOUT THE LITERARY INDUSTRY

We prefer:

Dante to Dante studies,

Joyce to Joyce industries,

Goethe to Goethe anniversaries,

Brecht to Brecht conferences,

Aristophanes to Aristophanes panels.

This is not anti-scholarship.

It is scholarship's oldest demand:

go back to the source.

The footnote is useful.

The footnote is not the work.

X. THE BOKWURST METHOD

The Bockwurst method consists of five operations:

Read.

Compare.

Remember.

Distrust.

Laugh.

The fifth is not optional.

XI. AGAINST MANAGED INTELLIGENCE

We live in an age of managed intelligence.

Intelligence is measured.

Learning is measured.

Attention is measured.

Research is measured.

Performance is measured.

Everything is accompanied by a dashboard.

The machine does not necessarily destroy thought.

It may do something more subtle:

it may make thought unnecessary by providing an acceptable substitute for it.

Universität Bockwurst therefore defends an obsolete luxury:

thinking without a dashboard.

XII. THE BAVARIAN SAUSAGE QUESTION

Why Bockwurst?

Because philosophy has always required unsuitable names.

Because serious institutions need ridiculous names.

Because the university is already absurd enough.

Because a sausage does not claim to be a theory.

And because:

Bockwurst is easier to remember than Excellence Initiative.

OUR PROGRAMME

Universität Bockwurst offers:

Philosophy

Lotze, Hegel, Adorno, Horkheimer, Spinoza, scepticism, metaphysics and the problem of moral facts.

Philology

Böckh, Usener, ancient languages, literary masks, pseudepigraphy and the stubborn materiality of words.

Literature

Goethe, Dante, Joyce, Brecht, Kleist, Aristophanes and the occasional contemporary text that has survived the editorial process.

History

Rome, slavery, property, labour, political power and the business affairs of great men.

Sociology

Simmel, Kracauer, Luhmann and the sociology of people who have forgotten that they are people.

Media

Popularisation, digitisation, artificial intelligence and the industrial production of intellectual air.

Poetics

The sonnet, the failed poem, the pseudo-poem, the post-poem and the question of whether poetry requires poetry.

THE UNIVERSITY WITHOUT A FUTURE

We do not promise excellence.

We do not promise innovation.

We do not promise impact.

We do not promise employability.

We promise only this:

that occasionally a sentence will be worth reading twice.

Perhaps three times.

And if, after all this, you still wish to become a professor,

please apply elsewhere.

UNIVERSITÄT BOCKWURST

*Not accredited.

Not employable.
Not digitised enough.*

Winter Semester 2026/27

Read seriously.
Laugh carefully.
Think without permission.