The enabler and her shadow: Moral injuries beneath the myth of meritocracy in neoliberal times
Author Identifier (ORCID)
Abstract
The neoliberal education model in tertiary institutions runs lean, prioritising larger classes and lower overheads. Such models result in a dilution of the student experience and job precarity for educators. This industrialised equation is fundamentally flawed, dehumanising and alienating groups and inflicting systemic injury to students and educators. This chapter confronts the neoliberal tertiary education ‘machine’ and examines how trauma manifests in university workplaces, with a particular focus on Enabling educator career precarity. Through the lens of a Jungian shadow archetype this chapter utilises collective autoethnography to reflexively examine the lived experiences, practices, pains and paradoxes of practitioner identities in Enabling education against the backdrop of neoliberal institutional change. Our analysis also extends the shadow metaphor to include the ‘dark side’, ‘dark mirrors’ or ‘mirror world’ of a disorienting academic capitalism and the psychosocial doubling, doubling down and general cognitive dissonance it produces in Enabling educators who are passionate about equity and fairness yet are often subject to marginalisation and precarity themselves. Drawing on reflective accounts from Enabling academics, it conceptualises trauma not only as an individual experience but also as a structural, relational and systemic phenomenon inherent in contemporary higher education.
Keywords
higher education, neoliberalism, trauma, precarity, enabling education, autoethnography
Document Type
Book Chapter
Date of Publication
1-1-2026
Publication Title
Trauma-Informed Teaching in Non-Traditional Spaces: Stories, Scholarship and Strategies
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
School
Access and Equity
ISBN
[9781041313441, 9781041313458, 9781003778516]
Copyright
subscription content
First Page
172
Last Page
190
Recommended Citation
Jones, A., Hopkins, S., Maclaurin, A., Mann, G., Larsen, A., & Siostrom, E. (2026). The enabler and her shadow: Moral injuries beneath the myth of meritocracy in neoliberal times. In A. Maclaurin & A. Jones (Eds.), Trauma-informed teaching in non-traditional spaces: Stories, scholarship and strategies (pp. 172-190). Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003778516-20