Structural Stupidity and Double Vision in Academia: A Case Study of Failed Research Project Collaboration

This article examines the dynamics of structural violence and epistemic delegitimisation within a research project at a German university. Drawing on poststructuralist and feminist organisational approaches, it demonstrates that universities are not neutral, rational systems, but discursively produced fields in which power, identity and difference are constructed and stabilised.

The focus is on a case study of a research assistant with a migrant background, whose criticism of the project’s normative orientation constitutes a discursive transgression. The reactions of the project management follow a pattern that David Graeber describes as ‘structural stupidity’: criticism is formalised, personalised and depoliticised; epistemic authority is secured through symbolic practices; and the responsibility for reflection is shifted onto the powerless. The subsequent institutional marginalisation of the researcher demonstrates how organisations deal with conflicts through exclusion rather than through structural reflection.

Keywords: Structural Stupidity, Double Vision, Epistemic Violence, Interpretive Labour, Failed Collaboration.