Showing papers by "Hugo Letiche published in 2022"

Coaching without a Coach: A Lacanian Case Study

Abstract: L’article interroge la fonction du coach dans le coaching. Lacan insistait sur le fait que la thérapie gagnait à se passer du « discours du maître » du thérapeute, nous nous en inspirons pour explorer l’idée d’un « coaching sans coach ». La réflexion repose sur l’étude de cas du groupe de coaching MM dans lequel les coachés se coachent eux-mêmes sans « coach », en présence toutefois d’un « modérateur » chargé de bloquer certains comportements comme la désignation de boucs émissaires. Une des singularités de Lacan est qu’il envisageait comme contre-productifs le contrôle et de subordination imposés par les thérapeutes au sein de l’« ego-psychology ». Dans une perspective lacanienne (notamment telle qu’interprétée par Žižek), le « coaching sans coach » en est un corollaire naturel. Lacan conceptualise l’identité psychologique avec son modèle I-S-R (Imaginaire-Symbolique-Réel), la littérature dominante sur le coaching utilise la triade Coaché-Coach-Organisation – nous proposons une synthèse avec le Nous-Coaché-Symbolique. Après avoir exploré les caractéristiques d’un tel « coaching sans coach », nous poserons, en discussion et conclusion, un ensemble de questions sur l’éthique et sur la désirabilité du modèle.

T(w)alking responsibility: A case of CSR performativity during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract: Abstract This paper centers on a case study of CSR performativity during the COVID‐19 pandemic. In the extant CSR literature, CSR performativity has focused on “walking the talk” and/or “talking the walk,” wherein narrative and action around CSR are typically treated as two different things with their relationships questioned. We focus on what has been called “t(w)alking” wherein speech is understood to be performative and wherein speech acts and CSR are merged, becoming one and the same thing. Performativity then entails what is (and what is not) said, whereby CSR involves taking responsibility for speech and/or silences. Our thesis is that the COVID‐19 pandemic led to the “presenting” of CSR as performativity, in the presence of Levinas' Other, as noble (speech) acts. We examine what became of CSR performativity in a for‐profit medical services provider when the COVID‐19 pandemic turned fatal for its main client group: the infirm elderly. The performativity of the statement: “The elderly and their carers must be protected” turned out to be crucial and set the stage for the provider's emergency action. Following on insights derived from Nietzsche and Levinas, and more specifically from their views on the particularity of ethical action, we find that CSR morphed into ethical performativity in the case study at hand. Against the backdrop of the views of these thinkers, the research potential of the performativity of “t(w)alking” in future CSR studies emerges and is critically discussed.

Liminality Affect and Flesh

Abstract: Liminality is an anthropological concept that has been influential in contemporary social studies. This article is written from an organisation culture and studies perspective wherein liminality has been seen: (i) as something that must be controlled, (ii) as a utopian call to creativity, and (iii) as a dystopian entrapment. Liminality has to do with whether the study of practice has been excessively cognitive whereby the human is reduced to concepts of control, efficiency and profit; and whereby the soma (Gr.) of the physical body is marginalised as mind, spirit, and ideation are prioritised. Thus, what of sarx (Gr.) or the flesh of existence (see Merleau-Ponty, Klossowski)? In this article we explore liminality evaluating its relationship to bodily-ness / bodyless-ness, affect and text. We start with a discussion of liminality as originated by the anthropologists van Gennep and Turner, and as pushed aside by Weick, but lionised as creativity by Kostera, and denounced as stagnation by Szakolczai. This is followed by an auto-ethnographic case study. The case study points to the unheimisch 2 of liminality which we examine via Pierre Klossowski’s manifoldness. Realising that text about liminality and its embodiment easily becomes paradoxical (unembodied and affectless), we present a non-textual (i.e., not written) visual reaction to the case; again, in the spirit of Klossowski; and we conclude with reflections co-inspired by Maurice Merlau-Ponty on the physical affectivity of liminality.

Bernard Stiegler and the necessity of education is the hammer broken and so what?

Abstract: Abstract There has been an excellent series of formative articles centring on Bernard Stiegler (1952-2020) as an inspiration to pedagogical thought; this is a summative article written from the perspective of after his death. Stiegler argued that education is ontologically crucial to human development, wherein technics or the ‘not-experienced-condition(s)-necessary-for-experience’ are crucial to humanity’s ability to create its own existence. Technics make possible the technologies underpinning contemporary Anthropocentric existence. While entropy poses the cosmological threat of death to life, technics supports negentropy or the collecting and marshalling of energy opposed to entropy. Education is a crucial means of social negentropy, however all human agency is characterized by the pharmakon of more entropy or increased negentropy. The tension is inevitable in the pharmakon between on the one side, care and cure; and on the other, poison and death. In this article, we ask: ‘Given his suicide, what sort of pharmakon was Stiegler for himself and for us?’1 The authorial “I,” ‘Bernard Stiegler’ is no longer a living critic of social entropy or of proletarization and ‘technoscience’; what do we now make of his oeuvre for education? We will point to his inversions and purposeful mis-interpretations of Heidegger and Derrida as crucial to his oeuvre. Stiegler’s phenomenal being has ended; what technics have been strengthened and specifically: ‘What now of education?’

‘Scritptology’. The Art of Édouard Louis (re-)viewed

Abstract: Le « Je » de l’auteur des études sur les organisations et les entreprises a été accusé d’être trop rationnel, excessivement aveugle au sort des pauvres marginalisés, trop égocentrique, confortable et opportuniste. Il y a là un problème de choix de centre d’intérêt, de thèmes et de pragmatisme. Il y a également un problème lié au processus d’écriture lui-même, c’est-à-dire à la langue, au style, et au texte. On a beaucoup écrit sur l’écrit, mais très peu sur la «scriptologie» ou le processus d’écriture (Rhodes, 2019). En tant que lecteurs, nous sommes confrontés à des textes stériles, clichés et forcés, mais aussi à des textes évocateurs, crédibles et authentiques. Cet article explore l’art de la scriptologie. Il prend pour exemple les textes d’Édouard Louis sur la vie des personnes économiquement et socialement défavorisées. Si l’écriture ou la scriptologie est convaincante, authentique et puissante, a-t-elle réussi ? Je me servirai de la critique de Lacan/Zizek sur la relation entre le langage (symbolisation) et l’émancipation, comme une stratégie pour explorer la réussite de Louis. La négation par Louis du piège de la pauvreté de la « ceinture de rouille » (française) est profondément émouvante et authentique. Mais la « négation de la négation » est-elle nécessaire pour que quelque chose change ? Et qu’est-ce que cela implique pour l’écriture ? L’écriture ou la scriptologie est un aspect essentiel de « l’art de faire de la recherche » qui, jusqu’à présent, n’a pas été suffisamment exploré ; cet article se veut un pas dans cette direction indispensable.