Psychophysical adaptation of teaching workers

from Fordist rationality to flexible accumulation

Abstract

This article analyzes the historical and ideological transformations that shape the psychophysical adaptation of teaching workers in the context of the transition from Fordist rationality to flexible capital accumulation.  Thus, we sought to understand how the metamorphoses of capitalism, linked to neoliberal ideology and the idea of “New Public Management,” affect the training and subjectivity of teaching workers, producing new forms of control and active consensus. This is an explanatory study with a qualitative approach, conducted using primary and secondary sources and documentary analysis, which aims to examine the role of educational counter-reforms as expressions of the pedagogy of capital and their influence on teaching work. The results indicate that the flexible logic of accumulation, supported by the diffusion of skills and the discourse of technological innovation, configures the psychophysical nexus of the teaching worker, intensifying the precariousness of labor activity, while naturalizing the exploitation of labor in subjectively consented forms. It is concluded that, although the historical forms of accumulation have changed, psychophysical adaptation remains a structural element in the reproduction of capitalist relations, taking on even more perverse features in contemporary times.