‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

The Production of Space

Speech Genres and Other Late Essays

It can be said that we inhabit a post-human world—an existence characterised by smartphones and social media, genetically modified food and IVF babies, life-extending technologies and prosthetic enhancements. In The Posthuman (2013), Rosi Braidotti offers a roadmap for navigating the global effects of this post-human predicament—one in which clear distinctions between the human and the non-human no longer hold, the nature–culture divide is destabilised, and man’s privileged status is under attack. The situation we find ourselves in, Braidotti argues, is neither dystopian technological nightmare nor futuristic fantasy but one that requires complex and nuanced critical responses to issues of subjectivity, ethics and politics. In the four chapters comprising The Posthuman, Braidotti outlines her vision of the post-human future based on an affirmative politics, which ‘combines critique with creativity in the pursuit of alternative visions and projects’ (54). As a feminist antihumanist, Braidotti expresses little nostalgia for the concept of ‘Man’ and its associated individualism, Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism. Chapter 1 ‘Post-Humanism: Life Beyond the Self’ charts the Humanist/anti-humanist debates to draw attention to the crisis of the human and the opportunity it affords to imagine alternative subjectivities grounded in relationality and the interconnection between the self and others (49). Methodologically, Braidotti adopts a feminist politics of location in her critique of various Humanist traditions. There is a profound reflexivity to her writing as she guides the reader through the intellectual trajectory that has resulted in her nomadic, affirmative politics. It is a legacy that incorporates social movements of the 1960s/1970s, as well as the continental feminism of Irigaray and Kristeva. Spinoza and Deleuze and Guattari also feature as philosophical touchstones from which she advances her vision for the posthuman as a ‘relational subject constituted in and by multiplicity, that is to say a subject that works across differences and is also internally differentiated, but still grounded and accountable’ (49). By framing her argument within the narrative of her own intellectual story, the book conveys an immediacy and intimacy not often found in academic prose. Stylistically, it is as though we are inside her head—a post-human experience, indeed. Her writing is as expansive and impressive as you would expect—a swarm of ideas assuredly curated into a compelling argument for generating new forms of subjectivity and ethical relations to confront the challenges of a post-human existence. Consistent with existing feminist appraisals of the post-human (Halberstam and Livingston 1995; Hayles 1999; Toffoletti 2007), Braidotti acknowledges the complexity of the post-human predicament, seeking alternative frameworks to think about post-human subjectivity in non-dualistic ways. What Braidotti brings to these debates is an emphasis on materialism by way of Spinozist monism. In championing the relational, embodied and embedded qualities of post-human existence, Braidotti reprises the concept of zoe—a generative and vitalist force that allows for connections and affinities to be made across

Book review : the posthuman

Écrits: A Selection

This paper identifies four sets of textual practices that researchers in the field of organization and management theory (OMT) have used in their attempts to be reflexive. We characterize them as multi-perspective, multi-voicing, positioning and destabilizing. We show how each set of practices can help to produce reflexive research, but also how each embodies limitations and paradoxes. Finally, we consider the interplay among these sets of practices to develop ideas for new avenues for reflexive practice by OMT researchers.

Colloquium with Mats Alvesson : Mats Alvesson in dialog with Patrizia Hoyer: "Reflecting on Reflexivity: Reflexive Textual Practices in Organization and Management Theory"

https://eprints.ncl.ac.uk/file_store/production/249177/3C37BBF0-FA53-4C76-AF4E-B76B3C3B7674.pdf

Conversational identity work in everyday interaction

Our aim is to elucidate a position that takes identity to be dynamic and changeable over time and to propose a conceptualization that provides a way of mapping alternative imperatives and opportunities for identity work. It is argued that dynamic identity is inherently complex, being constructed through interaction between the self and others. These interactive activities are conceptualised as “identity work”.[1] We regard an understanding of identity work to be significant both for the theorizing of identity and for those who work and manage in organizations, particularly where the organisational situation is itself dynamic.

/pdf/identity-work-processes-and-dynamics-of-identity-formations-2tpi3v6rh4.pdf

Identity Work: Processes and Dynamics of Identity Formations

As the lead, introductory, contribution to this special issue ‘Exploring Registers of Identity Research’, this paper offers a view of three different ‘registers’ that might be seen to characterize identity research and which feature, to a greater or lesser extent, in the selected papers. First, the paper offers a means to understand the different theoretical traditions used to explain what constitutes identity and how it might be known. Second, it considers the relationship between different levels of identity – individual, group, professional, organizational and societal. Third, it reviews the methodologies used to understand identities and examines key theoretical assumptions which feature in academic debates, and in the selected papers, around identity theorizing. Drawing on the papers included in this special issue we offer a framework as a heuristic device that might guide scholars looking to enter the field of identity research and enable those already familiar with particular theoretical traditions, levels or methods to explore possibilities for extending their research. As an enticement to tackle the challenges extension across-registers can present, we again turn to the special issue articles to examine – through a series of ‘gets’ – the different tactics authors might use to access the rich potential offered by cross-fertilization between registers. Our contribution then lies in advancing the potential for dialogue between registers of identity research.

/pdf/exploring-the-registers-of-identity-research-1ibsoipp1y.pdf

Exploring the Registers of Identity Research

Chapter considers the impact of researcher-client relationships in 'engaged reserch' forms such as ethnography. In particular, the impact of and dynamics around the friendships that emerge during research.

"But I thought we were friends?" Life cycles and research relationships

Within the managerial arena the last century can be characterised, or perhaps caricatured, as being concerned with the pursuit of control and efficiency. In this pursuit time and space were treated a priori categories that have been commodified, rationalised and considered deterministically. The last two decades have, however, seen an increasing emphasis on the role of the intangible intellectual, emotional and attitudinal properties of organizations. While organization studies, and theory building, shifted in favour of these intangible factors, mainstream authors, together with many in the managerial community, continue to ignore these studies except where they contribute to establishing further control. Consequently many have critiqued contemporary management practice as exercising total, panoptic control over the time/space of employees. While accepting the rhetorical strength of these studies, we argue that control is necessarily imperfect, as disorder remains immanent in the construction of order and is subject to its own process of becoming. However, the suggested 'imperfect panopticon' itself falsly dichotomizes important aspects of the spatial/temporal experience in placing control against freedom, good against bad. In contrast the conceptualisation of space and time developed in this paper suggests these categories should be understood theoretically as complex and post-rational. We seek to inform an emergent heterotopian theory/practice that embraces complexity and ambiguity, proposing a new perspective that we believe is significant for innovation, knowledge and power.

Peter McInnes

Papers

Conversational identity work in everyday interaction

Identity Work: Processes and Dynamics of Identity Formations

Exploring the Registers of Identity Research

"But I thought we were friends?" Life cycles and research relationships

Organizational space/time: From imperfect panoptical to heterotopian understanding