Emotional Mismanagement: Academic Labor’s Neoliberal Values in Lourdes Ortiz’s Las manos de Velázquez

Lourdes Ortiz’s 2006 campus novel, Las manos de Velázquez, depicts the deleterious emotional effects of neoliberalism’s encroachment into the Spanish university on the physical, psychological, and emotional wellbeing of faculty. Through a study of narrative technique and the representation of emotion, I will demonstrate that the protagonist is depicted as a self-regulating market whose emotions must be managed for success, and that Ortiz never challenges the neoliberal belief in self-responsibility or questions the university’s role in provoking personal crises. Her protagonist’s failures are depicted as his own and the system that constrains his actions is never indicted.