The object‐orientated political subjectivities of McUniversity

Abstract

Higher education has changed drastically in recent decades, leading to the emergence of what some have called ‘McUniversity’. This article adds a new perspective by exploring how the everyday lived experience of this kind of space constitutes a dense political field. We draw on our own experience of an emblematic architectural site on our own university campus – the Student Union building – to advance an analysis of the everyday built environment that includes both objects of design and the political subjectivities that emerge along with them. What unites this relationship is an affective experience through which political life emerges. This approach also allows us to expand the purview of what is political about the everyday spaces of McUniversity to include gender, sex and nationalism, rather than relying only on critical theories of capitalism to critique what has become of many college campuses.