The Precarious Subject of Neoliberal Education

Abstract

There is a profound tension in the mainstream educational imaginary today. On the one hand, educational scholars, policymakers, and practitioners rely heavily on affirmative concepts in their work, leading to the proliferation of positive language within public discourse about educational issues. On the other, educational conditions – particularly within public schools in societies facing neoliberal restructuring – have deteriorated significantly, marked by the intensification of longstanding inequalities alongside the emergence of new problems. That is to say, at the same time that education – both its institutions and the individuals inhabiting them – is increasingly characterized by conditions of insecurity, the language of the mainstream educational imaginary has responded by becoming increasingly positive. This tension threatens critical visions of education, and indeed it mirrors established concerns in critical theory, itself. Building on Adorno's critique of the German existentialists’ conceptual mystification of domination and Marcuse's critique of bourgeois ideology's severing of culture from historical processes and social conditions, this chapter demonstrates the sustained operation of these tendencies through patterns and processes of subject formation in contemporary education. The rise of affirmative jargon in education is representative of a broader policy and pedagogical movement to cultivate capacities and dispositions in students that prepare them to navigate the hazards of an increasingly volatile social and ecological world. As an expression of the adaptationist imaginary in mainstream education, this movement consolidates a cultural logic of educational insecurity, reinforcing individualism, fostering cynicism and passivity, naturalizing socially constructed risks, and ultimately threatening the critical function and emancipatory potential of education.