Breaking the silence: The hidden injuries of neo-liberal academia

Abstract

This paper refers to the context of British universities and tackles the relation between macro-organisation, the institutional practices undergoing major changes and the affective embodied experiences of academics today. Based on various fragments from daily academic life collected over a period of one year, the analysis emphasizes the new forms of precariousness, the intensification and the extensification of academic work. The author reveals how the new academic labour processes imply various forms of emotions ranging from exhaustion, stress, insomnia, anxieties to toxic shame which remain largely secret and silenced in the public discourse of the academy. By focusing on experience and pointing to some of the ≫hidden injuries≪ of academic life, the author recalls us that after making them visible the next challenge is how we might begin to resist.