Producing Pleasure in the Contemporary University

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

   PDF

2. Partaking of Pleasure

   • Marcus K. Harmes, Patrick Alan Danaher, Stewart Riddle

   Pages 1-12

3. Producing Moments of Pleasure Within the Confines of the Neoliberal University

   • Eileen Honan

   Pages 13-24

4. ‘Do What Sustains You’

   • Stewart Riddle

   Pages 25-36

5. The Pleasure of Writing

   • David Bright

   Pages 37-47

6. Wild Choreography of Affect and Ecstacy

   • Jennifer Charteris, Adele Nye, Marguerite Jones

   Pages 49-64

7. The Joy in Writingassemblage

   • Sarah Loch, Linda Henderson, Eileen Honan

   Pages 65-79

8. Female Pleasure in the Academy Through Erotic Power

   • Cecily Jensen-Clayton, Rena Macleod

   Pages 81-94

9. The Intrinsic Pleasure of Being Present With/In Humanistic Research

   • Gail Crimmins

   Pages 95-105

10. For Hermann: How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

    • Carol A. Taylor

    Pages 107-119

11. Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

    • Pauline Collins

    Pages 121-135

12. Reducing the Drag

    • Alison L. Black, Gail Crimmins, Janice K. Jones

    Pages 137-155

13. Testimonio and the Idios Kosmos of the Contemporary Academic

    • Andrew Hickey, Robyn Henderson

    Pages 157-169

14. Self-Determination Theory and Academic Life

    • Erich C. Fein, Rahul Ganguly, Thomas Banhazi, Patrick Alan Danaher

    Pages 171-184

15. The Pleasure and Pain of Aboriginal Being in the University

    • Kathryn Gilbey, Tracey Bunda

    Pages 185-199

16. Academic Writing, Creative Pleasure and the Salvaging of Joy

    • Susanne Gannon, Jo Lampert

    Pages 201-211

17. From Frustration to Flow

    • Judy Gouwens, Kenneth P. King

    Pages 213-227

18. Pleasure, Pain and the Possibilities of Being and Becoming

    • Samuel Davies, Patrick Alan Danaher

    Pages 229-241

19. “Don’t Cry – Do Research!”

    • Fred Dervin

    Pages 243-254

20. Back Matter

    Pages 255-257

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Academics working in contemporary universities are experiencing unprecedented and unsustainable pressure in an environment of hyper-performativity, metrics and accountability. From this perspective, the university produces multiple tensions and moments of crises, where it seems that there is limited space left for the intrinsic enjoyment arising from scholarly practices. This book offers a global perspective on how pleasure is central to the endeavours of academics working in the contemporary university, with contributors evaluating the opportunities for the strategic refusal of the quantifying, stultifying and stupefying delimiters of what is possible for academic production. The aim of this book is to open up spaces for conversation, reflection and thought, in order to think, to be and to do differently – pleasurably. Contributors rupture the bounds of what is permissible and possible within their daily lives, habits and practices. As such, this book addresses increasingly significant questions. What are some of the multiple and different ways that we can reclaim pleasure and enhance the durations and intensities of our passions, desires and becomings within the contemporary university? How might these aspirations be realised? What are the spaces for the pleasurable production of research that might be opened up? How might we reconfigure the neoliberal university to be a place of more affect, where desire, laughter and joy join with the work that we seek to undertake and the communities whom we serve?

• universities
• neoliberalism
• professional identity
• academic culture
• pleasure

• University of Southern Queensland, Australia

  Stewart Riddle, Marcus K. Harmes, Patrick Alan Danaher

• Central Queensland University, Australia

  Patrick Alan Danaher

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