The Knowledge Laborer under Performance Governance: The Institutional Roots and Intellectual Critique of University Faculty Alienation and Its Systemic Logic

Abstract

Under the dual pressures of neoliberal governance and global knowledge metrics, the subjectivity of university faculty is undergoing profound erosion. This paper focuses on the case of Chinese higher education, critically examining how university teaching and research staff are increasingly transformed from “intellectuals” into “cognitive/knowledge laborers” amid performance-based evaluation, digital control systems, and international ranking pressures. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Hardt and Negri’s knowledge labor, Foucault’s governmentality, and Gramsci’s organic intellectuals, the article constructs a critical apparatus for understanding the institutional violence and psychological exhaustion prevalent in Chinese academia. Through empirical cases and political critique, it explores the structural contradictions in contemporary universities and proposes paths toward resistance. Inspired by Chinese scholar and thinker Lu Xun’s legacy of spiritual rebellion, this paper calls for a reaffirmation of intellectual dignity and a reconstitution of university teaching and research staff as critical and public intellectuals within an increasingly managed academic regime.