‘Critical Self-Care’: Reimagining Possibilities of Self-Care as Everyday Resistance in the Context of the Neoliberal University

Abstract

With the increasing neoliberalization of universities in the United States, current debates question the radical potential of self-care in higher education. Engaging with the work of Audre Lorde and James C. Scott, I argue how discounting self-care as insignificant or co-opted masks the possibilities for everyday forms of resistance through self-care. Broadening beyond a focus on simplistic binaries—individual versus collective, co-opted versus radical—this article offers a different orientation toward self-care—one that I call critical self-care—which recognizes that we can be critical of co-optation by the university, while also understanding self-care as critical to our existence within the university. I develop this conceptualization of self-care in the context of the neoliberal university, by identifying three facets of critical self-care—disruption of the hegemonic academic culture of overwork, building alternative ways of existing within the university, and allowing for the self-care of others—each of which reveals how self-care practices hold the potential for resistance and change to gendered and racialized norms of the institution, even in quiet or informal ways.