Neoliberal governmentality, subjectivity and the transformation of university. Scholars assessment as normalization technology

Abstract

Taking the Foucauldian reading of liberalism and neoliberalism as a starting point, we analyze the modes of subjectivation of the current power devices. Comparing them with the disciplinary techniques, as the exam, we emphasize the managerial nature and the strategies of control of contemporary power devices, which normalization effects have a “formal-assessment” character and entail a permanent production of innovation.

Then we analyze the assessment of the university teaching staff as a technique of great relevance in the transformation of the University within the framework of the neoliberal reforms. In the neoliberal context, this technique produces processes of individuation and overall effects at the same time. Considering the assessment as a technique genealogically linked with the exam, we analyze the subjective transformations that it entails and its global effects in the change of the value of knowledge as well as in the normalization effect of epistemic practices.