Engagement and Exhaustion as (Un)Expected Consequences of Academic Teachers’ Emotional Labor: Affective Injustice in Higher Education

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the emotional experiences of academic teachers, specifically how they relate to identity and power relations. I assume that the experience of emotions is embedded in the context of socio-political needs and interests. The theoretical background consists of research from the philosophy of emotions, specifically the conceptualizations of emotional labor by Shiloh Whitney, along with studies and analyses on affective injustice, such as those by Francisco Gallegos, Katie Stockdale, Alfred Archer, and Georgina Mills. Based on these concepts, I argue that working in contemporary, neoliberally managed academia has important consequences for the development of subjectivity, both positive and constructive, as well as negative, destructive, and degrading. Emotional labor can serve as a tool for self(trans)formation and (self)reflection; at the same time, it can affectively marginalize teachers’ subjectivity and decrease their sense of agency. This provides the theoretical context for research grounded in a qualitative framework. The reconstruction of academic teachers’ experiences was based on qualitative semi-structured interviews. The research results indicate that the emotional labor of academics is a response to the emotional culture of a university governed by neoliberalism. The findings indicate that academia is an alienating and emotionally exploitative space for workers, where various manifestations of affective injustice are evident, primarily as a loss of emotional well-being and a diminishment of agency among academic teachers. By situating the emotional experiences of university staff in the context of affective injustice, the article proposes that educational research on academia should open up a space for discussion on more equitable and inclusive institutional practices in higher education.