This study investigates the erosion of academic freedom in neoliberal universities, focusing on the concept of “voluntary servitude” as a mechanism through which academics actively, albeit unconsciously, contribute to their own subjugation. Moving beyond an individual perspective, the work examines how shared affective dynamics, such as collusion, perpetuate this condition. Drawing on a qualitative study with Italian academics in the WOP field, the findings reveal that freedom is often perceived as the absence of constraints: a personal privilege attained through career progression. Three pathways to so-called “emancipation” emerge: the gift, betrayal, and merit. These patterns take the form of pathological collusion that reinforces servitude by satisfying needs for recognition and protection, while obscuring structural inequalities and the erosion of the common good. The study argues that one way forward lies in collective reflexivity, a practice that enables the recognition and transformation of such dysfunctional patterns. The aim is to reimagine academic freedom not as an individual achievement but as a “freedom with,” grounded in shared responsibility, interdependence, and plurality, thereby transcending neoliberal paradigms.
This article reflects on unresolved affective tensions in the field, not as failures or impasses but as analytical tools for (un)doing research. Shifting from a distant and detached analysis of my interlocutors’ narratives towards a decentred account of myself, I trace my disorientations, discomforts and troubles in en...
In this response paper, I begin by carefully engaging with the concerns raised during the symposium “Reclaiming the Publicness of Education” at the Nordic Education Research Association (NERA) conference held in Helsinki, Finland, in March 2025. I do so by highlighting key issues addressed by each of the contributing...
Dion Rüsselbaek Hansen· Philosophical Inquiry in Edu...· 0 citations
One ongoing theme in management theory focuses on mitigating the dehumanizing effects of organizational systems and related forms power over employees. Perhaps paradoxically, the alienating tendencies of neoliberalism resulted in various humanist and emancipatory theories intended to mitigate that alienation, which ope...
Eric K. Austin, Ryan Rouse· Tamara: Journal for Critical...· 1 citation
This article conceptualises research as an act of hope, framing inquiry as a creative and liminal space where meaning is continually negotiated. Drawing on Ernst Bloch's philosophy, I understand this liminality as a refusal of closure, a generative site where the unfinished and the possible are allowed to take form. Wi...
“Traffic anxiety” has become a collective psychic condition among digital content producers. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis as its theoretical framework, this article conceptualizes “traffic” (viewership metrics) as objet petit a, arguing that it is constructed under the gaze of the algorithmic “big Other” as an ev...
Israel’s war on Gaza has prompted a wave of protests against human rights violations that has spread across most European countries. As universities have become arenas of contestation, there has been an increase in forms of repression of academic freedom and of political rights within academia. Our systematic, case-ori...
S. Doğan, D. della Porta, F. Alagna· Perspectives on Politics· 0 citations
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