Paying for Success “Outside Your World”: Antagonising Neoliberal Higher Education

Abstract

This Chapter builds three inter-related arguments about the impacts of neoliberalism within higher education on those (of us) within it and on the society it claims to serve. Firstly, the specific contemporary formations of neoliberalism did not arise as a tabula rasa in the late 1970s and early 1980s but rather rely on and are deeply entwined with entrenched conservative social positions (whilst claiming not to be). This neoliberal-conservative nexus maintains particular (and familiar) power arrangements and governs how we fit, or don’t, within neoliberal institutions, focusing on higher education institutions. Arising from this, is the second argument that neoliberalism is a form of antagonistic politics which actually relies on systemic eradication of difference from an expected and idealised “fitting body”. This systemic eradication is masked within contemporary institutions by ontological claims as to why the familiar power arrangements persist and why creating greater equality would be detrimental, both laying claim to ‘common sense’ as the foundation of its arguments. Finally, this piece will further assess the impact of neoliberalism, and the price paid, in terms of how we come to understand ourselves and negotiate relationships where we are both subject to and object of neoliberalism. Higher education, sees the neoliberalisation of the self in action, institutionally instilling its preconditions and collectively those within it are collusive in the forms of acceptance or resignation (rather than resistance). However, overlooked in previous discussions of resistance is discussion of the affective work demanded to maintain contradictory ways of existing inherent in the neoliberal university particularly that demanded of those who are “Othered” by not meeting the idealised “fitting body”.