This article discusses the possibilities of using the metaphors of cracks and membranes in teaching academic writing. It points out that it is the writing classes that can provide a point of resistance to the transformations of the university geared towards neoliberal efficiency. The intellectual-emotional tasks set by Brach-Czaina navigating the library and existence allows for the initiation of concrete tasks at the level of literary description, metaphors and emotions. This article makes a preliminary parallel between Jolanta Brach-Czaina’s and Susan Sontag’s projects. The immersion of both in modernism and its subsequent transgression, especially the importance they both place on metaphors, allows for such a convergent reading. Furthermore, in their intellectual biographies, both are authority figures.