Abstract
In this paper I debate a range of unnoticed presuppositions which are used by a selection of influential thinkers in organisation studies to adapt a theory of the irreal to the social realm. I first examine a selection of ‘Postmodern’ authors and focus on the ‘Process Metaphysics’ theories (especially those influenced by Bergson) present in excerpts of contemporary OS ‘Postmodernism’. I argue that ‘Process-Metaphysics’ is the theoretical movement which underpins these aspects of Postmodernism in organisation studies. This is evinced in the writings of Chia, and Cooper which adopt a dualist view of language deployment and link this with both an anti-rationalist and anti-individualist perspective. I also examine this Postmodern thesis of Process Metaphysics in relation to its adoption of the device of the Identity Metaphor, which fastens its theories to the ‘real.’
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References
Bergson, H Time and Free Will: An essay on the immediate Data of Consciousness Dover Publications, 2001
Bertens, H ‘The Idea of the Postmodern’ (1998) in Butler, C Postmodernism: A Brief Introduction Oxford University Press 2002
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Clegg, R, S, Kornberger, M, and Rhodes, C ‘Learning/Becoming/Organising,’ in Organisation, 12/2, 2005 pp 147–167 (quotation p 147)
Clegg et al, 2005 p 151
Clegg et al, 2005 p 58
Clegg et al, 2005 pp 60–61(referring to Deleuze and Guattari op cit 1987)
For instance: Prigogine, I and Stengers, I Order Out of Chaos New York, Bantam Books, 1984.
Sokal, A Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture Oxford University Press 2008
See for instance Bell, J A Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos: Gilles Deleuze and the philosophy of Difference University of Toronto Press 2006.
The overlap with post-structuralism and the ideas of Derrida is clear in views antagonistic to presence, for instance, but whereas that influence on Postmodernism is obvious, it can be argued that Derrida himself is not a Postmodernist. See for instance, Norris, C New Idols of the Cave: The limits of Anti-Realism Manchester 1997 which makes a cogent case along these lines.
Prigogine and Stengers op cit 1984
Lee, T Dark Dance Warner Books 1992 p 56
Bell op cit 2006 p 174
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This notion recurs in theorists such as Deleuze and De Landa in relation to complexity theory (derived as an influence in Clegg et al, 2005, above; and mentioning Prigogine and Stengers as indicated).
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Chia, R ‘Ontology: Organisation as World-Making,’ in Debating Organisation: Point-Counterpart in Organisation Studies R Westwood, and S Clegg (eds) Blackwell Publishing pp 98–114. quotation p 104
Chia op cit 1993 p 104
Chia op cit 2003 p 105 (first extract)
Chia, R ‘Organisation Theory as a Postmodern Science,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Organisation Theory: Metatheoretical Pespectives H Tsoukas and C Knudsen (eds) Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005 (paperback edition) pp 113–143 ). (second extract)
McLuhan, M The Gutenberg Galaxy: The making of Typographic Man Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1967 Cited in Chia op cit 2003b
Chia op cit 2003b pp 128–129 (third extract)
Bergson op cit 2001 p 54
Chia op cit 2003b p 115
Jaynes notes that: ‘consciousness is not what we generally think it is. It is not to be confused with reactivity. It is not involved in hosts of perceptual phenomena. It is not involved in the performance of skills and often hinders their execution. It need not be involved in speaking, writing, listening and reading…’ Jaynes, J The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Penguin Books 1976 (reprinted 1990) pp 46–47. These assertions are interesting but are noted for their provocative value rather than as an assertion of truthfulness.
See for instance Devlin Goodbye Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind John Wiley and Sons 1997 pp 261–291.
Freeman cites the nature of the current controversy amongst figures such as Dennett or Ryle. He notes of Dennett that ‘the nearest we shall ever get to a defining feature of consciousness is, (Dennett says), our capacity to relive or rekindle contentful events…’.Freeman, A ‘An Exercise in Exorcism- review of Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness by Daniel C. Dennett’ Times Higher 7 April 2006,, p 25
à la Chia op cit 2003b
Jaynes op cit 1990 p 50
See my arguments in: Sheard, S ‘Tyranny of the Eye? The resurgence of the proto-alphabetic sensibility in contemporary electronic modes of media (PC/Mobile telephony); and its significance for the status of knowledge’ in Dariusz Jemiekniak and Jerzy Kociatkiewicz (eds) Handbook of Research on Knowledge-Intensive Organisations IGI Global, Hershey, PA; March 2009.
My move to critique these thinkers does not imply my assent to this ‘paradigm’.
Sutcliff, F E Introduction to Descartes, R Discourse on Method and Meditations Penguin Classics 1980/ reprinted 1968 pp7-24
This aspect is well illustrated in Burrell’s account of the contrast between modernism and post-modernism and built into the demarcation of the two ‘states’ historically speaking. For instance Cartesian perspectives are associated with the perspectivalism and ‘Cartesian Scopic regime’ which leads to ‘an individual human being (which) inhabits a uniform, infinite, isotropic space…’ (Burrell, G, ‘Linearity, Control and Death’, in Discourse and Organisation D Grant, T Keenoy, and Cliff Oswick (eds) Sage Publications 1998 pp134-152). The contrast may also be felt in terms of the exemplar philosophies (Heidegger’s notion of embodied being or Dasein; Derrida’s conception of the enthralling aspect of Greek-inspired Western Metaphysics) which have ‘informed’ postmodernism in OS.
Note, for instance, the following extract from the preacher Guilbert of Nogent (in the early medieval period): ‘No preaching seems to me more profitable than that which reveals a man to himself, and replaces in his inner self, that is in his mind, what has been projected outside; and which convincingly places him, as in a portrait (quodammado depictum), before his own eyes…’ Quoted in Morris, C The Discovery of the Individual Harper Torchbooks 1972 p 67
Morris op cit 1972
Chia op cit 2003b p 117
Chia op cit 2003b pp 118–124
See also the list of key themes cited by Alvesson: centrality of discourse; fragmentation of identities; critique of idea of representation; loss of foundations/power of grand narratives; identification of linkage between power and knowledge (Alvesson, M Postmodernism and Social Research Open University Press 2002 pp 47–48).
The Critical Realist approach of Bhaskar contains some element of modified constructivism also.
Rorty op cit 1979
Gellner, E Reason and Culture Blackwell, Oxford and Cambridge US 1992
Kieckhefer, R ‘The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic’ American Historical Review vol 99 June 1994 pp 813–836
Chia op cit 2003b p 133
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Sheard, S. Continental Philosophy and Organisational Studies: A Critique of Aspects of Postmodern thought in OS. Philos. of Manag. 7, 43–59 (2009). https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20097321
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20097321