The scholarly affair is self-love (original) (raw)
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Journal of Sociology, 2018
Neoliberal political rationalities have transformed not only national policy agendas, but also the strategies that individuals adopt to navigate their everyday lives; sometimes described as 'everyday neoliberalism'. This article explores everyday neoliberalism's contribution to the transformation of workplace ethics through a case study of Australian academics. National higher education policy reforms have been mirrored by a transformation in academics' perceptions of what forms of self-management are legitimate and necessary. While governmental reforms are couched in a language of technical efficiency and accountability to stakeholders, interviews with academics reveal depoliticising practices of evaluation. Values conflicts – between scholarly autonomy and managerial efficiency – are indicative of tactical struggles over the means by which academics evaluate their selves and labour. The managerialisation of university governance has not eroded political and value commitments, but has encouraged academics to pursue more individualised forms of ethics, which reaffirm their compliance with managerial norms.
Setting the Scene: Research and Writing Against the Neoliberal Grain
Compliance and Resistance Within Neoliberal Academia, 2021
This chapter outlines our collaborative research and writing project which recounts personal stories regarding everyday survival in the neoliberal academia. It begins by depicting the characteristics of academic neoliberal regime, such as authoritarian managerialism, accountability processes, standardization measures, performance indicators and benchmarking achievement audits. As previous research shows, neoliberalism impacts the everyday lives and wellbeing of academics, prompting us to take a deeper exploration of academic selves. The chapter then goes on to describe our methodology, collaborative autoethnography, introducing the advantages and disadvantages of personal stories as a research method. It ends by outlining our working method, exploring how we collectively wrote, shared, discussed and reflected on our texts.
On 'being for others': time and shame in the neoliberal academy
Journal of Education Policy, 2019
Amid growing studies of time in higher education, few have theorized the interconnections between affect, academic work, and temporality-the way we make sense of and relate to time changes-in the neoliberal academy. By interconnecting temporality with shame, this article presents a critique of dominant temporalities of neoliberal higher education by exploring the differing existential temporalities associated with academic work. It presents and teases out the various manifestations of a dominant 'temporality mirror' and its relationship with affect. It argues that academic life's temporality mirror is embedded in shame logics (i.e. 'Being for others'). The temporality mirror acts both a) as an external thing (i.e. external object of reflection triggering self-evaluation) and b) internal way of knowing/being (i.e. internal node of existential/embodied self-evaluation). Such shame logics manifest through various temporal dimensions such as: a) temporal norms, b) future selves, and c) the future of others. This article proposes a set of questions that may open the possibility of delinking from the dominant temporality mirror and concludes with implications for academic subjectivity, higher education institutions , and higher education policy.
Administrative Theory & Praxis
This article examines the "citizen side" of the performance and audit revolution through an exploration of individuals engaged in a "data-driven life." Through an exploratory qualitative study of individuals' video logs taken from the "Quantified Self" website, we examine how individuals are using information technology and web 2.0 interfaces to generate data about themselves for themselves. We explore the questions, 'Who are the subjects of governing today?' and 'How do subjects care for and govern themselves, and how is data put to use?' We analyze the different kinds of self- government, expertise, and practices of the self that are involved in self-quantifying practices. The article concludes by examining the implications of these practices for our larger understanding of governance and the subject of governance in an emerging "info-liberal age."
Research, practice, and the space between: Care of the self within neoliberalised institutions
This article challenges the neoliberal discourse of “instrumental rationality” that is encroaching on theories of qualitative research, critical reflection, and subjectivity. I return to Foucault’s historical ontology of the self and the ancient Athenian precept care of the self to show that critical reflection and rationality have never been mutually exclusive. I put the care of the self metaphor to empirical use by examining the practical and ethical issues that emerged when I transitioned from a state-sponsored frontline employee working with public housing tenants, to a university researcher investigating public housing tenant participation in a state-sponsored urban redevelopment project. The focus is on my experiences as a practitioner-researcher working within two neoliberalized institutions, while also constructing a performative research ethic to mount a challenge against the politics of neoliberal “evidence” in the space between.
“The Passion to do it”: Exposing Academia’s Love Affair with Neoliberalism (TASA 2015)
The discourses of ‘passionate’ and ‘autonomous’ scholarship through which academics account for their attraction to academe and their motivations responsibilise staff for their fortunes. The popular conception of academic work as ‘passionate’ labour frames academics’ search for stability and meaning within the neoliberal logic of the enterprising, responsible self. Whereas neoliberal universities value academic labour where it can demonstrably contribute to corporate and national strategic objectives, ‘passion’ emerges from within academic speech communities as a means to both produce a common experience of academic labour and normalise an expectation of passionate scholarship. Because it is defined as a personal quality, ‘passion’ individualises the acceptance what is endured in the name of what is desired. Drawing on original qualitative interviews, this paper explores how Australian academics account for their passion for academic work. The exposure of, and reflection upon, the relationship between our ethical self-construction and broader structural circumstances is a promising tool to engage in a cultural critique of precarious employment in academia.
Society, 2019
Self-censorship is a well-documented phenomenon within the academy. Building from the works of Tocqueville, Mill, and Smith, this paper identifies sources of self-censorship within the academy, namely the values of intellectual abrasion and civility, that are associated with the liberal intellectual tradition. The resulting phenomenon of self-censorship, I argue, has both positive and negative effects on the quality of public and academic discourse. Given the dual nature of self-censorship, scholars seeking to make the morally upright choice of whether to self-censor or to speak up face both an epistemological and a moral challenge. I argue that in discussions of the "impartial spectator" and the virtue of self-command, Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments anticipates these challenges and lends guidance to the scholar who is sincerely committed to doing what is right when navigating associational life within the academy.
Concluding Reflections—A Dialogue: This Bridge We Are Building:“Inner Work, Public Acts”
2006
Abstract I suppose it is still a risky business for those of us in academia to expose and express too much of our inner, authentic selves, right? But why should it be like this?? What does it do to us? I'm glad that we had a chance to explore a little about our true selves with each other and out in the public at the conference! Gloria Anzaldúa was always ahead of her time.