Abstract Universities embody a fundamental paradox: they are institutions created to solve civilizational problems that have themselves become primary sites where such problems are generated. This paper develops “crack literacy” – the capacity to read institutional breaking patterns as information rather than failure. Through methodological engagement with kintsugi, the Japanese art of golden repair, we examine how universities operate as recursive systems where attempted solutions intensify original contradictions. Drawing on Byung-Chul Han’s temporal analysis, Isabelle Stengers’ concept of “learning to be affected,” and Bruno Latour’s hybrid networks, the investigation reveals why conventional approaches to institutional reform consistently reproduce the patterns they attempt to address. Following Yoko Tawada’s literary practice, this exploration allows itself to be shaped by the impossible conditions it investigates, developing forms of attention that conventional academic discourse cannot provide. Kintsugi doesn’t eliminate breaking but creates conditions for fragments to hold together differently. Universities practising crack literacy would learn to work with contradiction as structural necessity rather than problem to solve, developing temporal patience adequate to transformation that cannot be rushed.
Michelle Ocriciano (Tue,) studied this question.