This article explores how meanings around risk, health/safety, and workers’ bodies are constructed in an academic context. I do so through the study of a single academic in Australia who sustained a back injury at work. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews and documents, I attempt to show the embodied experience of an injured worker’s struggle for care, recovery, and survival in the neoliberal academy. Writing from the nexus of workplace health and safety and critical management literatures, the raw testimony of this injured academic lays bare the violences that are enabled within a wider culture of self-discipline, individualism, and performativity in the university. The story presented in this article exposes how physiological and psychological injuries can be exacerbated through the very health and safety procedures that are designed to prevent and alleviate harm. Please note that this article contains references to suicide and suicidal ideation.

本文探讨了在学术背景下如何构建风险、健康/安全和工人身体的含义。我通过研究澳大利亚一位在工作中背部受伤的学者来做到这一点。通过对深度访谈和文件的分析，我试图展示一名受伤工人在新自由主义学院中为护理、康复和生存而奋斗的具体经历。从工作场所健康和安全以及批判性管理文献的联系中写作，这位受伤学者的原始证词揭示了在大学更广泛的自律、个人主义和表演性文化中发生的暴力行为。本文介绍的故事揭示了通过旨在预防和减轻伤害的健康和安全程序如何加剧生理和心理伤害。请注意，本文包含对自杀和自杀意念的引用。