Reflections and Confessions on the Making of a Performative Autoethnography: University Professional Development Reviews and the Academic Self

This chapter consists of an autoethnographic performance of the managerialist technology of control known as the Performance (or Professional) Development Review (PDR). The PDR is a strategic management-driven activity completed by staff in UK universities. Its goal is to monitor, assess and measure staff performance against a set of criteria. For academics on permanent lecturing and research contracts, criteria typically include teaching, research and impact. The chapter focuses on the making of this autoethnographic performance. In the process of making, self-reflection was experienced as a swaying pendulum movement, oscillating between the performing-public-academic self, which attempted to conform to organisational expectations, and the hidden-private self, which was critical of, and resistant to, these expectations. The pendulum was a means for self-reflection and critical inquiry in the author's attempts to deconstruct, process and make sense of her experiences. Creating the autoethnography functioned as a form of catharsis, self-care and resistance, in that it allowed for a reconciliation of the public and private selves and provided a means of surviving and negotiating a way through the maze of academic life.
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