Over the last 20 years the imbrication between capital and the university has grown much firmer. This
paper seeks to map one point at which this binding occurs: in critical theory. Recently scholars in strategic
management have turned to processual and relational ontologies in an attempt to reimagine the logics of
profit, value, and growth. These same ontologies have appealed to critical geographers as a means of
reconceiving space as unfixed. Drawing on a case study of Deleuze’s appropriation in management literature,
I show how such ontologies presuppose a vitalism that necessarily reproduces and obscures the structures of
exploitation.