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- Title
Diversity Work and the Narcissisms of Affective Exits.
- Authors
Eng, Michael
- Abstract
This article explores the use of affect by diversity workers as a vehicle of exit from the contemporary neoliberal University. I show that, in response to what Sara Ahmed calls feelings of depletion that result from institutions appropriating the diversity work that faculty of color and female- and LGBTQ-identified faculty perform, there is an impulse among faculty to make students into narcissistic objects in order to compensate for the injury of affective depletions the University inflicts. This mode of affective exit is actually a response that I claim the contemporary neoliberal University encourages, thus helping to perpetuate its institutional misogyny and racism. In order, then, to intervene in the neoliberal organization of the contemporary University, I argue that we need to engage in a form of institutional critique that makes visible the desires that encourage us to idealize students and make them into narcissistic objects as a substitute for forging a real exit from the contemporary neoliberal University's misogynist and racist project.
- Subjects
NARCISSISM; NEOLIBERALISM; LGBTQ+ people; AHMED, Sara, 1969-; MISOGYNY; RACISM in higher education
- Publication
Feminist Formations, 2019, Vol 31, Issue 1, p124
- ISSN
2151-7363
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/ff.2019.0012