Professional vertigo in neoliberal higher education

In a number of publications, Bonnie Urciuoli has explored the ways in which neoliberal discourses have come to be used in contexts of higher education, particularly in representations of students marked by race and class. I reflect on my own work with an organisation utilising neoliberal discourses for the representation of students in order to show that the organisation engages other types of people on campus, such as faculty members, but fails to provide them a tenable subject position. I engage with Urciuoli’s work in order to ask why the contradictions faculty members face in their work with the organisation do not pose a threat to the organisation’s activities and reproduction.