Unlearning organized numbness through poetic synesthesia: A study in scarlet

I define “organized numbness” as the organized inability to perceive sensations, a learned desensitization operating in the way our (1) bodies, (2) language, and (3) knowledge are organized. I propose poetic synesthesia’s power to associate several sensory perceptions as a way to unlearn this sort of disembodied habituation. Inspired by the so-called “accursed” French poets of the 19th century, the “long, prodigious, and rational disorganization of all the senses” of synesthesia helps me propose a method for unlearning organized numbness. I illustrate this by “a study in scarlet,” that is, by plunging into the depths of a synesthetic exploration of blood as my “fil rouge” to infuse our working bodies with renewed sensorial and embodied—or rather “embloodied”—life. I end by discussing how cultivating poetic synesthesia can help us unlearn organized numbness in the body, in language, and in knowledge, and how it can instead respectively foster resonance by learning (1) a different embodied habituation of sensorial sensitivity, (2) a language that instead of abstracting us from the senses actually allows us to reconnect with them and to delve deeply into their combined and thereby potentiated power, and (3) an epistemological gateway to the “unknown.”

Who’s afraid of the senses? Organization, management and the return of the sensorium

Organization and management are the perpetual, and perpetually fraught and resisted, ordering of sense experience. However, banning the senses into the outside of thought, and of organizational analysis, was – and to a large degree still is – the default and mostly implicit and unquestioned mode of thinking and studying organization and management. Introducing the special issue on ‘The Senses in Management Research and Education’, this essay historicizes and contextualizes the neglect of the senses, dwells upon possible reasons for keeping the sensory at bay and discusses recent attempts to remedy this situation. The contributions to the special issue are introduced into this context. In conclusion, we speculate on what might happen next.

The atmospherics of creativity: affective and spatial materiality in a designer’s studio

Encounters between materials and bodies matter throughout the creative process. This paper contends that creative work depends on these encounters generating and filling the atmosphere with affect. Based on an in-depth ethnography within a fashion design studio, the article empirically traces such affective encounters and corresponding atmospheres. In the studio, designing is performed through artefacts as well as experimental and collaborative gestures that inspire affective reactions and spark creative work. The creative body is part of a complex and atmospheric space where materials, bodies, and external influences circulate via affective encounters and prompts. The analysis reveals the spatial and affective materiality of creativity and contributes to the recent interest in atmospheric organizational inquiry.

Materiality as a Basis for Valuation Entrepreneurship: Re-modeling Impressionism

This paper addresses the recognized need for connecting scholarship on materiality and evaluation by conceptualizing how materiality provides grounds for “valuation entrepreneurship.” It extends the scope of materiality scholarship by considering an ignored organizational outcome while offering stronger evidence for the role of supply-side factors in social evaluation. The theoretical model posits that materiality affords opportunities for identity construction and social organization that can lead to the emergence of a new theory of value contesting the evaluative regime. This framework is applied to the reanalysis of a famous case: Impressionism. The analysis shows that new materials and methods of painting served as a “focus” for the social organization of artists with a shared identity of craftsmen. These artists espoused a new theory of value that advocated the “unfinishedness” of artworks and used natural perception as an objective basis for contestation of the “subjective” evaluative regime at the salons. The contestation had political overtones, drawing on cultural resources and scientific tenets to justify the valorization of individuality and decentralization of art appraisal. An endogenous account of culture in action presents materiality as a natural counterpoint to the emphasis on conceptualization.

Intellectual emancipation as minimal humanism – The relevance of Jacques Rancière in business school teaching

How might emancipatory teaching practices look like in the context of the business school, when the meaning of the subject of emancipation, the human being, has become unsettled? Our philosophical essay addresses this question by excavating Jacques Rancière’s conception of intellectual emancipation and showing its practical relevance for experiments with emancipatory teaching in a business school environment. Speaking from within a tradition where the meaning of human is irrevocably unsettled, Rancière, remarkably, still insists on an essential link between emancipation and humanism – although in a minimal version. First, we show why and how Rancière’s analyses of emancipation are united by the common concern to affirm such a minimal humanism. Thereafter, we describe how three features sets intellectual emancipation apart from social and aesthetic emancipation and makes it pertinent to take intellectual emancipation to school: The possibility and intention to emancipate others, the acknowledgement of the constructive role of reason herein, and the significance of teacher authority in doing so. Lastly, we move beyond and problematize Rancière’s clear conceptual account of intellectual emancipation by extracting three heuristic pedagogical devices from it and by recounting their confrontation with the messy details of our teaching practice at the business school.

Fashion and Organization Studies: Exploring conceptual paradoxes and empirical opportunities

Although frequently perceived as inconsequential and frivolous, fashion is a central interdisciplinary concept and a substantial global industry. This necessitates taking it seriously, both as a set of theoretical tensions, and as a concrete empirical phenomenon of rich potential interest to organization studies. Our essay outlines and further develops fashion’s conceptual and empirical expressions, and suggests subsequent avenues for valuable research. In particular, we commence with a discussion of three key definitions, namely fashion as individual manner, fashion as organizing of dress and fashion as a system. This enables us to problematize its industry and economy, from their historical roots and evolutions, to their varied organizational frictions, forms and practices today. We then conclude by examining the ongoing, substantial changes within the fashion industry as we have known it since the nineteenth century, and considering its potential implications and openings for organization studies scholars.

Towards an Articulation of the Material and Visual Turn in Organization Studies

Contemporary organizations increasingly rely on images, logos, videos, building materials, graphic and product design, and a range of other material and visual artifacts to compete, communicate, form identity and organize their activities. This Special Issue focuses on materiality and visuality in the course of objectifying and reacting to novel ideas, and, more broadly, contributes to organizational theory by articulating the emergent contours of a material and visual turn in the study of organizations. In this Introduction, we provide an overview of research on materiality and visuality. Drawing on the articles in the special issue, we further explore the affordances and limits of the material and visual dimensions of organizing in relation to novelty. We conclude by pointing out theoretical avenues for advancing multimodal research, and discuss some of the ethical, pragmatic and identity-related challenges that a material and visual turn could pose for organizational research.

Organizational Actorhood and the Management of Paradox: A Visual Analysis

We extend the theorization of organizations as social actors to illuminate how external attributions of actorhood are made by the business media and how these attributions are associated with heightened environmental paradoxes confronting organizations. We analyze the visual depictions of organizations on 530 covers of an influential periodical, BusinessWeek (BW) magazine, over a 30-year period, 1978–2007. We present evidence that the visual depiction of organizational actorhood increased over time and that this depiction occurred more frequently in periods characterized by heightened paradoxical tensions in the business environment. Moreover, we find that in these periods, there is a complementarity between the visual and verbal modes: verbal text highlights the oppositional nature of paradox while the visual image offers interpretations for the management of these tensions. Our work contributes to understanding how the visual construction of organizations by external audiences can position the organization’s standing as an actor, as well as the organization’s capabilities for action under conditions of environmental challenge.

On Silence, Creativity and Ethics in Organization Studies

Silence is at once a notoriously difficult and most elusive subject. Management and organization studies depict silence as exclusionary, oppressive, needing to be overcome, and as a strategy to resist oppression. The idea that silence might be cultivated for and not against, stressing positive and enabling (and yet non instrumental) aspects of silence, is meanwhile much less considered. Yet if silence excludes, it can exclude all sorts of things, including undesirable things. Silences forge an emptiness, and so a space for the possible emergence of something new, beyond existing beliefs, norms and practices. Certain silences facilitate creativity, including creativity of an ethical sort. The endeavour of this article is to in part interrogate and deconstruct the current status of silence in management and organization studies, and further to anchor the topic more firmly in organizational scholarship and practice, particularly in relation to ethics and creativity.