Performance Management As Panopticism: Embedding Intellectually Repressive Conditions In Academia
Performance Management As Panopticism: Embedding Intellectually Repressive Conditions In Academia

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores how performance management (PM) in higher education has become an oppressive panoptic tower in its pursuit of institutional accountability. Panopticism, derived from the panopticon, is used as a metaphor for academic surveillance. Using Foucault’s notion of panopticism, we argue that academics have succumbed to the ‘normalization judgment’ effected through systemic institutional surveillance practices. In this case study, we explored how PM facilitated through target-setting performance contracts is experienced by a selection of South African university academics. There are indications that performativity is creating a reality that is constraining, alienating and individualizing, thereby detracting from the academic enterprise.

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