Resistance and enrolment in the enterprise university: an ethno‐drama in three acts, with appended reading

Abstract

We are now at a point in higher education policy studies where we know that neoliberal discursive rationalities and practices are prevalent in the contemporary enterprise university, and we are beginning to get a sense of their impact on academic work and subjectivities. The article asserts that a more pressing question is how to powerfully and effectively resist neoliberalisation. The article investigates the conditions of possibility for resistance by exploring how resistance is struggled over in everyday academic work practices. The article presents an ethno‐drama, based on materials collected through participant observation in several Australian universities, and offers a reading of the drama which focuses on what in Actor–Network Theory is called ‘enrolment’. It is argued that a better understanding of how academics, collectively and as individuals, are vulnerable to the enrolment practices in the enterprise university is necessary for the enactment of effective resistance.

Keywords:

• discourse
• analysis
• actors
• institutions