Philosophy and Management: Production of subjectivity and self-management in capitalism (24-26 March 2010)

Faculty
Associate Professor Bent M. Sørensen, Dr Steven Brown , Peter Fleming and Thomas Basbøll

Course Coordinator
Associate Professor Bent M. Sørensen

It is expected that the student participate actively in the whole program, and, on beforehand, to have read and engaged critically with the texts offered for the course.

Students must be registered on compatible PhD-programme.

The course aims to take up a central part of what Organization and Management Studies is all about: what is the nature of work in the 21st century, and what is the nature of the subject at work?

One the one hand this course takes as its point of departure a subject without foundation or essence. On the other hand, this subject seems to be, in the knowledge intensive sectors, to be subjected to a high degree of self-management, that is, a call to produce yourself as a competent and self-managed employee. This sets new and difficult demands for management: does it flee and become superfluous, or may it develop new competences? It also sets a new scene for resistance in organizations, to which the latter part of the course will turn.

To understand these transformations it is important for us as critical scholars to see the processes in their economic, historical and social context.

The course will run over three full days. The first day will begin with introductions to the course and of the participants in the course. This will be followed by a debate on the question of what critique is and which role it may play in the participant’s projects.

The guiding maxim will be that philosophy involves cultivating the art of ‘articulate disagreement’, and hence sessions will focus on particular difficulties, antagonisms or disagreements in the texts we study, the research we discuss, the questions we raise and the PhD projects which are debated.

This course will consider the consequences of taking management as an object of philosophical inquiry. It will posit the question, what is critique? It will also discuss the crisis of capitalism, in which the working subjects have, basically, only themselves or their bodies/brains to offer. Hence they constitute an important area of both contemporary management and contemporary critique.

While subjectivity and resistance have become important points in current organizational discourse, this course aims to bring the participants projects into its center: how can your text become critical and contemporary, that is, important? The course will, following this, also involve a Reading and Writing Workshop.

Lecture plan

Time/period	Faculty	Title
Wednesday March 24
9.30-11.00	Bent M. Sørensen and Steven Brown	Introduction to the Course
11.30-13.00	Steven Brown and Bent M Sørensen	What is critique?
13.00-14.00		Lunch
14.00-15.30	Steven Brown and Bent M Sørensen	The production of subjectivity in capitalism: The Poor
16.00-17.00		Working in dyads: what is critique, how can it apply to my project?
17.00-17.30	Steven Brown and Bent M Sørensen	Day ending/rounding up
Thursday March 25
9.00-10.30	Thomas Basbøll, Steven Brown, Bent M Sørensen	Thinking about Reading and Writing
11.00-12.15	Thomas Basbøll	Reading and Writing: Practical Skills
12.15-13.30		Lunch
13.30-15.00	Bent M Sørensen & Peter Fleming	The production of subjectivity in capitalism: The self-managing employee
16.00-17.00		Working in dyads: what is self-management, how can it apply to my project?
17.00-17.30	Bent Meier Sørensen, Peter Fleming, Steven Brown	Day ending/rounding up
19.00 -		Dinner
Friday March 26
9.00-11.00	Bent M Sørensen and Peter Fleming	The production of subjectivity in capitalism: Resistance
11.30-13.00		Working in dyads: what is resistance, how can it apply to my project?
13.00- 14.00		Lunch
14.00-15.30	Bent M Sørensen, Steven Brown, Peter Fleming	The Tasks of a Coming Philosophy
16.00-17.00		Participant’s reflections

While there will, as indicated, be an amount of lecturing in the course, this is expected to play out as dialogue, just as the participants’ own project come to play a role in the course.

Basbøll, Thomas (2008) ‘Softly constrained imagination: Plagiarism, pastiche and misprision in the theory of organizational sensemaking’ Working Paper.

Benjamin, Walter (1996) ‘On the program of the coming philosophy’ in Marcus Bullock and Michael Jennings (eds) Walter Benjamin Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913-1926. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Brown, S.D. (2005) In the theatre of measurement: Michel Serres. in Campbell Jones and Rolland Munro (eds) Contemporary Organization Theory. Oxford: Blackwell

Brown, S.D. (2007) After power: Artaud and the theatre of cruelty. in Campbell Jones and René ten Bos (eds.) Philosophy and Organization. London: Routledge.

Brown, S.D. & Stenner, P. (2009) Psychology without foundations: History, Philosophy and Psychosocial Theory. London: Sage. (in parts)

Butler, Judith (2004) ‘What is critique? An essay on Foucault’s virtue’ in Sara Salih (ed) The Judith Butler Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

Costea, Bogdan, Norman Crump, and Kostas Amiridis. 2008. Managerialism, the therapeutic habitus and the self in contemporary organizing. Human Relations 61, (5) (05): 661-685.

Deleuze, G and Felix Guattari. 1988. 6 November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body without Organs? A thousand plateaus, p. 149-166.

Fleming, Peter, and André Spicer. 2008. Beyond power and resistance: New approaches to organizational politics. Management Communication Quarterly 21, (3) (02): 301-309.

Foucault (1997) ‘What is critique?’ in Sylvère Lotringer and Lysa Hochroth (eds) The Politics of Truth. New York: Semiotext(e).

Grey, Christopher and Amanda Sinclair (2006) ‘Writing differently’ Organization, 13(3): 443-453.

Sørensen, Bent M. (2010) ’St Paul’s Conversion: The Aesthetic Organization of Labour’, Organization Studies.

Sørensen, Bent M. (2005) ‘Immaculate defecation: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in organization theory’ in Campbell Jones and Rolland Munro (eds) Contemporary Organization Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Boltanski, Luc, and Eve Chiapello. 2005. The new spirit of capitalism Trans. Gregory Elliot. London: Verso.

Foucault, Michel. 1977. Intellectuals and power. In Language, counter-memory, practice., 205-217. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1988. Technologies of the self. A seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Guattari, Felix. 2000. The three ecologies. London: Athlone Press.

Please send your application to Julie Siezing ( jsi.lpf@cbs.dk) no later than February 24 2010