ABSTRACT
This article explores the affective infrastructures of contemporary global academia with special reference to Finland. It expands on Lauren Berlant’s ‘cruel optimism’ to question how it is sensed and felt by middle range scholars, that is, those of us situated between full professors and degree students in academic ranks. We shed light on the emotional injuries caused by the individualised and aspirational work culture and managerial techniques that work through performance templates connected to love and shame. Our analysis shows that working in global academia requires constant critical evaluation of our future possibilities made in compromised working conditions. Although we join the growing body of literature on academic complaints, we also focus on the possibilities for creativity and change. To do so, we draw on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s concept of the middle ranges of agency and how they could be productively put to work. Like other critical studies of political economies of global academia, we see subjects as shaped and themselves shaping the affective infrastructures of academic labour. In particular, we focus on the ways personal values and capacities merge with therapeutic and neuro-inspired managerial norms and suggest – in line with Rosalind Gill – that collectivity is the place in academia where mid-range agencies emerge the most fruitfully.
