“Cruel optimism” in the universities: A discursive‐deconstructive reading of promising promotional projects of gender equality
本文分析爱尔兰大学中两个性别平等项目的话语材料，揭示它们如何通过鼓励女性学者进行策略化、自我审计和自我推广，最终传播了“残酷乐观主义”。
Abstract The article illuminates how gender inequality in Ireland's higher education sector continues to be constituted at policy and at local institutional levels as a problem that requires ‘fixing the women”. It analyses two gender equality projects' discursive materials targeting female academics in Irish universities, showing that while these projects embrace elements of feminist praxis and critique, they ultimately propagate “cruel optimism”. They do this by exhorting women academics' subjectification to burdensome practices of strategizing, self‐auditing and self‐promotion, lured by the promise of awards that only a few will attain. Presented are two cases of what we call “promising promotional projects” that we have encountered in our work in our university. We use the term “projects” to refer to time‐limited, bounded interventions that respond to “gender equality” as a field of government, where problems have been diagnosed and where practicable and pragmatic solutions are seen to be required. Our discursive‐deconstructive reading of these projects' discursive materials highlights how gender equality projects target women for “promotion” through mobilizing gendered technologies of the self.