An impotent critique: capitalist realism and insensitive subjectivities in the neoliberal university

Abstract

The reappropriation of the university by neoliberal discourses and practices has become an object of exhaustive theoretical reflection within the academy. However, the incorporation of this new field of study -Critical University Studies- coexists, paradoxically, with the daily acceptance of managerial rules of the game that hide its contingent and political character. In this paper, we want to inhabit that paradox and render intelligible the consolidation of capitalist realism (Fisher, 2016) as a horizon of meaning, through the analysis of three processes that produce forms of insensitivity (Rolnik, 2019): the subjective effects of distance and indifference generated by the naturalization of assessment techonology; the self-complacency caused by the dynamics of reappropriation of critical discourses through their depoliticized inclusion, taking as a reference the equality policies in the university environment and the cancellation of the future as an emancipatory horizon that produces the corrosive labor imaginary offered to the student body focused on entrepreneurship and employability.