Questioning the role of 'faith' in a micropolitics of the neoliberal university

Abstract

This paper proposes that the question of the role of faith in academia invites collective attention because it pertains to a micropolitics of the neoliberal university. It locates the question of faith within discourses that foreground the academic’s experiences of the vicissitudes of the scholarly profession in order to expose and transform the depoliticising, injurious, and silencing effects of the neoliberal academic regime. The paper proposes that faith can play a role in revitalising the relational capacities that are inhibited within the prevailing climate of competitive individualism and precarity. Building on deconstructive writings on faith, the paper will develop this two-pronged hypothesis: that faith is necessary to foster intellectual hospitality, relations of reciprocity, and solidarity; and that we investigate it in relation to scholarly affect.