Athena’s claim in an academic regime of performativity: Discursive organizing of excellence and gender at the intersection of heterotopia and heteronomia

Abstract

From a Foucauldian perspective, we regard “excellence” and “gender” as discourses that become relevant in academia. We analyze the organizational dispositives of “excellence” and “gender” as organizing patterns and rationalities within academic organizations. Beginning with the modern conceptualization of the independent university as a heterotopic space of and for society, the programmatics of the “entrepreneurial university” shift this heterotopic space into a heteronomic one. How do academic professionals bring about discursive organizing of excellence and gender when reflecting on institutional programmatics and organizational strategies for the promotion of early-career academics? What are these early-career academics’ subject positions that are systematically brought about within these organizational strategies? This article discusses two empirical cases involving academic institutions and strategies of discursive organizing. While in the first case of the global player organization, the claim for excellence is made from a position of “already being there,” the second, aspiring organization is still working toward excellence. This article demonstrates that gender discourses in the global player organization are in a marginalized position, while gender discourses in the aspiring organization gain strategic relevance within the organization’s entrepreneurial strategies. This article therefore shows how heterotopic strategies intermingle and intersect with strategies of heteronomic organization of excellence.