Labour in the Academic Borderlands: Unveiling the Tyranny of Neoliberal Policies

Abstract

The article examines the current conditions of labour within the neoliberal university, particularly with respect to the labour of borderland academics. Borderland is used in this instance to refer to the political space embodied by radical intellectuals across disciplines engaged in examining questions of class, race, gender and other social formations of inequality, through materialist perspectives. This work sets out an appeal for an emancipatory pedagogy and praxis by politically engaged academics, based on well-established foundations of revolutionary pedagogy, including Paulo Freire’s notion of social consciousness as an imperative of educational practice in higher education. Toward this end, a concrete use value of academic labour is discussed, promoting such commitments in our practice with students and colleagues to support possibilities for the emancipatory reshaping of academic work, institutions, and society.