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Weltschmerz

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The Alienated Academic

Part of the book series: Marxism and Education ((MAED))

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Abstract

This chapter develops the alienation of the academic from herself, as she is increasingly made and re-made as an academic entrepreneur whose labour only has worth where it reproduces value. As a result, the internalisation of specific behaviours that are disciplinary becomes a key outcome for the system of production, with concomitant manifestations of physical and psychological distress. Here ideas of anti-humanism and dehumanism, linked to melancholy, anxiety and ill-being are analysed in relation to the proletarianisation of the University as an anxiety machine. The chapter addresses how formal and real subsumption, in terms of the re-engineering of the governance of higher education and the reproduction of academic labour in the name of value, feed off and into alienation.

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  1. De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

    Richard Hall

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Hall, R. (2018). Weltschmerz. In: The Alienated Academic. Marxism and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94304-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94304-6_6

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94303-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94304-6

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