Influential Thinkers and the Critical Discourse
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In The Order of Things, Foucault draws our attention to the human tendency to classify concepts and objects, and to arrange these concepts and objects into some kind of agreed or imposed order. He argues that each epoch creates a table or grid of similarities and analogies that are accepted as sensible or coherent. The coherence of one epoch becomes the myth of a later age. The tenuousness of any truth claim is made explicit when we examine particular ideas across cultures, space and time. Very few ‘facts’ have universal and enduring support. But surely cats, dogs and elephants are identifiably distinct categories of creatures when and where-ever such creatures are to be found? To believe this is to miss many nuances and perhaps to impose our preferred ways of seeing the world by organising ideas as we do.
Foucault uses an example from medieval Chinese classifications of animals that challenge modern European distinctions made between Same and Other. This ancient Chinese form of order sets out fourteen categories of animals, including those that are “fabulous, belong to the Emperor, are sirens, seen from a distance and those having just broken the water pitcher” (1966; English Translation 1970: xvi). Foucault suggests that such forms of order may appear to be disturbing or laughable. They may even create anxieties. Nevertheless, such ordering can be researched empirically, for a “system of elements” (ibid.: xxi). Order is that which is given as an inner law and at the same time has no existence except in the grid, created by “a glance, and examination, a language ... [I]t is only in the blank spaces of this grid, that order manifests itself in depth as though there, waiting in silence for the moment of its expression” (ibid.: xxiii).
Think about the changes in meaning within the grids you know of: healer/witch; traitor/hero. Even the seemingly solid categories of male and female are disturbed when we reflect on the many human beings born with an unclear biological sex but to whom a gender is soon ascribed. Thinking outside of the given grid is difficult. Researchers in this field are encouraged to seek the limits and forms of what is say-able. The object of this type of research is the examination of discourse, the movement of the savoir – the known. Foucault’s definition of discourse is that body of ideas accepted/experienced as truth, which arises and exists in different ways in varying social contexts. These contexts provide the perceived conditions of existence and practical fields of deployment and practice. Let’s turn our mind to management education – the ahistorical, apolitical, amoral teaching of the functions of organisation? Yeah Right!
For a number of years, a top New Zealand beer brewer has run an advertising campaign in which a witty series of billboards feature a common NZ pun: “Yeah Right”. The pun on which this advertisement is based is used as a response to an outrageously false or delusional statement – by drawing attention to its opposite.
We are of the view that for a very long time, students have been lead to believe that management education was a kind of functional training – and that the examination of values is a ‘soft’ OB topic where well pre-digested and sanitised ideas about goodness assured those with some conscience that ‘management’ is a force for good. Management education, as all education and as all management practices, is rooted in various histories, and manifests particular politics and values that are not always easy to observe. In this webpage we provide some resources and exercises you might use to test your own position on various ideas or situations that require management. In its broadest sense of this question we could posit that the global system of organisation is based on Truth, Justice and Dignity. Yeah, Right! Try: Greed, Exploitation and Destruction skilfully covered by a veil of delusions and justification, clever PR and obstinate false consciousness. Surely not? How do we assess ourselves, our corporate actions, and our place in the world? How can we practise understanding critically the ideas of critical thinkers on the situations all around us? How about crafting some fun billboards of your own that contrast aphorisms you would like to challenge.