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Enhancing criticality and resistance through teaching in the neoliberal academy Kristiina Brunila1   · Elina Ikävalko1   · Juho Honkasilta1   · Ulpukka Isopahkala‑Bouret2

© Springer Nature Limited 2020

Abstract Academic work and teaching in academia are undergoing major changes in the pre‑ sent neoliberal era. Our purpose in this article is to explore theoretically and in prac‑ tice how to bring criticality and resistance to life through teaching in the academy and to demonstrate it is not necessarily always a narrative of success. The article is based on our experiences as critical scholars struggling to find ways to contribute to questions of education and social justice, both individually and jointly, over the past 20 years. In this article, we particularly want to examine some of the possibilities and challenges of bringing homo politicus back into the agenda of education. Keywords  Teaching · Higher education · Neoliberal ethos · Governance · Power · Discursive approach · Poststructuralism · Differences

You can talk the talk but what about walking the walk? Theory and concepts for us are forms of breathing and living as well as resistance towards prevailing normativities and status quo. We are keen to find approaches that are relevant to pressing societal questions, something that makes sense of this world and our thinking. For us, teaching has always been a political activity and therefore * Kristiina Brunila [email protected] Elina Ikävalko [email protected] Juho Honkasilta [email protected] Ulpukka Isopahkala‑Bouret ulpukka.isopahkala‑[email protected] 1

Faculty of Educational Sciences, AGORA for the Study of Social Justice and Equality in Education ‑Research Centre, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 9, 00014 Helsinki, Finland

2

Department of Education, University of Turku, Assistentinkatu 5, 20014 Turku, Finland



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bringing questions of social justice and equality into it has been a shared interest. In this article, we examine some of the possibilities and challenges of bringing homo politicus (Brown 2015) into the agenda of university teaching. We do this by pre‑ senting a tangible case and by examining the making of academic subjectivities in universities in times of neoliberal ethos by adapting critical poststructural approach. Neoliberal welfare state reform has been characterised by the transformation of the administrative state. It was previously responsible for human well-being, as well as for the economy, but nowadays the state enhances competitiveness and efficiency and gives power to global corporations and installs apparatuses and knowledge through which people are reconfigured as productive economic entrepreneurs of their own lives (Davies and Bansel 2010, p. 247; Brunila and Ylöstalo fo r t h c o m ‑ ing). It is not only competitiveness and efficiency that are shaping citizens but also even more persistent changes in the ways citizens are perceived and how they should perceive themselves. As Davies and Bansel argues “it