Academia in liquid modernity: Digital overload, cultivation, and authenticity in teaching work

Much has been written about the demands of ‘pandemic pedagogy’ and the ‘online pivot’ which have seen educators across the globe move to online teaching. Multiple studies are emerging of these online pedagogies and hasty upskills. Less exploration exists on the educator’s own curation of the online self and on the extra workload of teaching online. This paper draws on the work of Zygmunt Bauman and Rein Raud, their work on performativity and ‘practices of selfhood’, to examine educators’ self-curation onscreen. I suggest that educators’ work has expanded to include the cultivation of an online self and that teaching online is a feature of the encroachment on the personal space and personal lives of academics. Teaching online, as such, is being weaponized by the neoliberal agendas at play in the education field.