At the heart of the neoliberal university, affective energies linked to roles, responsibilities, expectations, policies, and bodies impact the atmosphere of university life. Associate professors report the highest levels of dissatisfaction among all ranks, as they find themselves entangled in affective knots. To understand these knots in associate professor lifeworlds, we solicit their accounts and reveal affective pain points in the neoliberal university. In this paper, we illuminate the affective knots of melancholy, stasis, and death, giving voice, feeling, and texture to associate professors' dissatisfaction within the neoliberal institution. However invisible, these affective knots threaten the university's teaching, learning, scholarship, and social transformation.