This book explores questions concerning personal identity and individual conduct within neoliberal academe. The author suggests that neoliberal academe is normal academe in the new millennium though well aware of its contested nature and destructive capacities.

This book explores questions concerning personal identity and individual conduct within neoliberal academe. The author suggests that neoliberal academe is normal academe in the new millennium though well aware of its contested nature and destructive capacities. Examining higher education through a number of ideals, such as austerity and transparency, brings readers on a journey into its present as well as its past. If some of these ideals can be identified and critiqued, there is a chance that the foundations of neoliberal academe can be weakened. This book actively pursues pathways out of the neoliberal abyss--and offers that demanding a role for pleasure in higher education may be one of them.

“In his brilliant book, Di Leo creates a new language and mode of critique to understand the ideas, social relations, desires, values, and forms of agency that imprint neoliberalism with a sense of normalcy.  This book offers up a new way to reclaim not a romanticized university of the past but one that serves the present and future as an institution for democracy, justice, critical inquiry, and social responsibility. A must read in dark times.” (Henry A. Giroux, University Professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest, McMaster University, Canada)

“This important book’s major contribution is to promote workable standards, challenging the reigning system, which would turn neoliberalism against itself. Filled with brilliant readings of intellectual classics, recent educational Jeremiads, and contemporary popular culture, this book will be a classic guide for those who would transform the new normal.” (Daniel T. O’Hara, Professor of English and Mellon Professor of Humanities, Temple University, USA)

“Di Leo offers a prescient critique of the recasting of higher education by neoliberal prerogatives. Much more than simply describing the crisis or bemoaning the lineaments of austerity, this book explores the basis for resistance and change in academe. For those of us concerned about the future of the university, this should be required reading.” (Peter Hitchcock, Professor of English, City University of New York, USA)