This thesis seeks to explore and challenge a series of personal feelings, presumptions and motivations of a teaching-focused academic operating in contemporary legal higher education.
Using a process of reflexivity, namely challenging assumptions and perspectives over the contemporary state of legal higher education, this thesis seeks to unpack neoliberalism, its contested influence on higher education practices both generally and within legal education, and the extent to which counter-neoliberal practices can, or should, be formed.
This thesis reflects on the depth of neoliberal discourse within higher education, and the complicity and passivity of apparently counter-neoliberal practices that can result from such normalisation. Through immersion in critical pedagogical and critical legal theory, the author develops a process of praxis; of reflection and action.
As part of this action, resistance and scholar activism are analysed to explore what possibilities, either practical or imagined, may emerge to expose the cracks in neoliberal rationality. Critical legal methodologies are also explored for their additional potential as counter-neoliberal.
This thesis also seeks to highlight the complicity of the university setting within neoliberal discourse, whereby those operating within its walls, whilst sharing feelings of resentment with being judged against the vision of a perfect neoliberal subject, must be empowered to commit to an ongoing reflexive approach of being in, but not of, neoliberal complicity.
The thesis explores both critical pedagogical possibilities, as well as wider activist practice, to conclude with a plan of action. This is formed as a manifesto, which seeks to harness the power of the collective over the neoliberal atomisation of the individual.
