The modern university is a factory that transforms knowledge workers into carcasses. We are cattle primed for the slaughter. Part poem and part poet’s novel, this abattoir is a college explores the hostile demands that higher education places upon capitalised bodies, upon students and faculty, whose common purposes are now brittle and pointless. If these institutions will never love you back, Tierney asks: can the knowledge worker foster a different collegial monster? Burn down the classroom, the poem replies, we can build an unreasonable college.
"Like a flower dropped on a bomb, Orchid uses her faculties to cut a window in the brick. After carefully reading this book, here is your assignment: practice saying "no." Let this no be sung in operatic tones, wear it like the lastest festive seasonal fashion or dance it like the grooviest moves on TikTok. Nooooo. Institute it."
—Jennifer Firestone, author of Story
"If you liked this movie, you might also like Julian Spahr's The Tranformation, Jed Rasula's This Compost: Ecological Imperatives in American Poetry, Caroline Bergvall’s Drift, Lytle Shaw's Fieldworks, Karl Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, and Samuel R. Delaney's Dhalgren."
—Charles Bernstein, author of The Kinds of Poetry I Want: Essays & Comedies
"Assignment 1: introduce OULIPO therapies to Gertrude Stein’s poltergeist. Assignment 2: defibrillate your abandoned genre. Assignment 3: frame every page of Catherine’s My New Job, Laura’s EtC, Ariana’s The Cow, a US education institution’s HR manual, and The Marbler’s Guide to Meat, then hang the frames on all your walls. Assignment 4: let Zarathustra out of the hole."
—Lisa Samuels, author of Livestream
"With both wicked humor and wise humility, Tierney’s this abattoir is a college demonstrates all the ways in which the college-corral is in need of collage’s bleeding edge. If you similarly believe that the hegemony of the university’s univocity deserves to hemorrhage, then this novel is for you. I also recommend the following: read Blanca Varela’s poem “Curriculum Vitae” in the open air every season of every year of your life, for every curriculum vitae is also a curriculum mortis. digamos que ganaste la carrera / y que el premio / era otra carrera... Next, cut up your current CV, place the pieces in a bag, and shake gently; take out each cutting and transcribe your new vita, which will better resemble you, even though unappreciated by the homogenized herd."
—Michael Leong, author of Words on Edge
