De la regulación y la performatividad al cuidado de sí: Una cartografía teórica sobre el desgaste, prácticas de cuidado y dispositivos de subjetivación en la universidad contemporánea.

Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary theoretical framework and a critical analysis of the ontological reconfiguration of the contemporary university, which is shaped by the logics of academic capitalism and New Public Management. It analyzes how the current university has shifted toward a managerialist model that imposes a strict academic neo-panopticism, where hypervisibility, performativity, and constant productivity operate as powerful devices of governmentality. This dynamic unfolds within a psychopolitics of self-exploitation, where professional burnout is systematically rendered invisible under individualizing discourses that overlook the structural violence of managerialism. In the face of this widespread scenario of standardization, bureaucracy, and job insecurity, a pedagogical and philosophical reading of the ethics of care and practices of the self is proposed. Based on an ongoing review of 35 empirical articles, from which a representative core was extracted specifically for this presentation, it is argued that teaching decisions based on care and practices of the self-enable teachers to reconfigure their agency and become artisans of their own subjectivity, prioritizing human, ethical, and relational bonds within the complex ecosystem of the classroom, thereby restoring the emancipatory meaning of contemporary higher education.