Life in Neoliberal Institutions: Australian Stories

Abstract

In this article, I examine some of the neoliberal technologies that have impacted Australian academics and their workplaces over the last three decades. My focus here is on the silencing of academics through those technologies. Neoliberalism works through entangled discourses and practices, which we academics have, in no small part, actively taken up. Recognizing the constitutive force of our naive collusion, and our own agency in the take-up and maintenance of neoliberalism, is relevant, first, to dispelling the sense of powerlessness that sucks the breath out of many in the academy, and, second, for mobilizing that agency in the development of collegial and collective practices that can contribute to the emergence of the post-neoliberal academy.