Negotiating identity in the face of neoliberalism: academics AND librarians?

Archer (2008) investigates young/er academics constructions of professional identity. She specifically chooses young/er academics because they have ‘grown up’ under the neoliberal regime and she is interested in learning whether they “have a capacity for criticality” (265) or critical thinking (as neoliberalism suppresses such), and whether it is possible to perform as a neoliberal subject without actually being one (265).

What is fascinating is how these academics deal with constructing their identities in the face of neoliberalism. Their struggles, and the forms they take, resonate with this librarian. I can recognize myself in their struggles. I know it is not appropriate to transfer Archer's findings to librarians as she did not study this specific group. A separate investigation would be necessary to make any claims and I’m slowly beginning to see how this might be possible. What her study does offer is a template against which to consider/muse over the extent to which neoliberalism has already embedded itself not just within our libraries but our lives and whether our identity construction takes a similar path.

After reading Archer’s article and seeing myself in her results, I am forced to recognize the extent of the invasion of neoliberalism into our academic libraries. I naively, perhaps, felt that neoliberalism was in the process of populating our libraries and that I was in a position to throw off the descending yoke. What I didn’t recognize was that the reins were already firmly in place. So the question becomes, is it possible to turn back neoliberalism in academic libraries…a question for another day. To continue...

What form does that neoliberalism take? Archer cites an audit culture or regime and culture of managerialism (266-267): there is a requirement to create products; a mantra of accountability and need to count everything; the demand for competition between colleagues, between departments and between faculty; a focus on funding; the rise of individualism; “masculinised performances” with concomitant rejection of women (you’re too soft or a ball-breaker with no other identity, much less a neutral one, allowed) (272-274); and “flexibility” (274) where “the neoliberal subject is governed through and active turning of power back upon the self (to produce the self-governing subject)” (275). For example you have to be flexible and work longer hours, and/or be willing to be shifted around your organization to meet short term needs. One can attempt to resist it through setting boundaries or attempting to create balance (275) but flexibility becomes a weapon against self as peer pressure comes into play in conjunction with rewards for those who conform along with pressure from management, entangled with personal desire to be professionally responsible.

This resonated. Flexibility feels like a choice but the infrastructure is oriented towards rewarding those who comply versus those who resist and critically assess and question this neoliberal status quo. Strategies or discourses used by academics illuminated for me the extent to which neoliberalism has damaged the work environment. The extent to which these academics, and I suspect librarians, have to twist, shoehorn and compromise ourselves to protect any sense of self/self-worth is shocking. The anguish associated with the push and pull of what seems right (our professional values, what nourishes our souls) versus what is neoliberal and required to put food in our mouths is slowly destroying our work environments and relationships with each other and with those promulgating neoliberalism (for libraries and librarians, our library management and association leaders). It all leaves us wrung and exhausted.

Archer identified five discourses (276-280) for academics constructing identity in the face of neoliberalism. So where do you see yourself?

1. safety through playing the game (276-277) even as some tried to carve out time for “meaningful and interesting intellectual work” (276) through acquiring grants to create breathing space, by consciously attempting to fit self into the preferred mode, while other attempted to “shoehorn critical/intellectual work into ‘un-critical’ externally funded projects” (277).
2. challenging/speaking out (277-278) though Archer notes these young/er academics aren’t usually in a position to affect change.
3. creation of supporting practices (278) where academics “organize to create relationships of informal support” (278) though this carries costs for participants. For example mentoring relationships where there may be a lack of support and/or recognition.
4. self-protection through work on the psyche (278-279), so even as you are “compliant, ‘self-flogging’ subjects who produce the desired outputs” (278) you negotiate your sense of self to protect your ability to act with integrity, ethically, professionally and responsibly (which implies neoliberalism overrides and denies these values). These academics report lowered expectations while others psychically disengage.
5. trying to be ‘otherwise’(279-280) which the author describes as the boundaries and balance strategies used by these academics. This includes involvement in other activities and interests including in partners and families. Archer notes that “there was also a recognition that ‘balance’ is neither desired nor accommodated by the ‘greedy’ system” (280).
6. Archer suggests “there were small spaces of hopefulness” (281) and “important moments and spaces of resistance” (282) where the academics “retained some degree of understanding of their experiences and positions as structurally located and constituted. In other words, they were not ‘purely’ neoliberal subjects…”(282). 

Archer, Louise. (2008). The new neoliberal subjects? Young/er academics' constructions of professional identity. Journal of Education Policy, 23:3, 265-285.