In this article five women explore (female) embodiment in academic work in current workplaces. In a week-long collective biography workshop they produced written memories of themselves in their various workplaces and memories of themselves as children and as students. These memories then became the texts out of which the analysis was generated. The authors examine the constitutive and seductive effects of neoliberal discourses and practices, and in particular, the assembling of academic bodies as particular kinds of working bodies. They use the concept of chiasma, or crossing over, to trouble some aspects of binary thinking about bodies and about the relations between bodies and discourses. They examine the way that we simultaneously resist and appropriate, and are seduced by and appropriated within, neoliberal discourses and practices.
Embodied women at work in neoliberal times and placesn this article we explore our embodiment as women engaged in academic work with a particular focus on how our working bodies are constituted in neoliberal workplaces and through neoliberal discourses and relations of power. 1 To this end we gathered together to engage in a week-long collective biography workshop where we produced written memories of ourselves in our workplaces and related memories of our embodied selves as students and as small children. These memories are the texts out of which we generated our analysis. Collective biography as a feminist practice is derived from the work of Haug et al. (1987). It also draws on the idea articulated by Cixous I