Culture and Organization

Vol. 14, No. 2, June 2008, 151169

Becoming self harm, theodicy and neo-primitive organizing necessary

evil or evil of necessity?
Lloyd Gray*
Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, UK
(Received January 2008; final version received May 2008)

Taylor and Francis

GSCO_A_308095.sgm

Culture
10.1080/14759550802079291
1475-9551
Original
Taylor
202008
14
lloyd.gray@anglia.ac.uk
GrayLloyd
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&&Article
Francis
Organization
(print)/1477-2760
2008
(online)

The self has emerged as integral to how we comprehend the ethos of contemporary postbureaucratic or what will be termed neo-primitive organizing. In juxtaposition, and
immanent, are multiple requirements for the self to be harmed, in various ways, for the
purposes of achieving organizational progress. This post-structuralist composition
explores how these requirements are inscribed, and desired, in different ways during
ontotheological and neo-primitive processes of sacrifice, neomasochism, simulacra,
exclusion, and theodicy. These processes permit the possibility that the harming of the
self can be justified (utility/include) and also discounted (diminish/exclude). It is argued,
that relations of self and harm constantly arise, and change, during non-integratable
affects and events of radical alteration; namely where self questioning (loss of self) and
questioning of self (identity) occur. However, it is argued, neo-primitive organizing
constantly refuses ethical responsiveness to self harm, through the inscriptive
superimposition of exchange relations of lack, debt and guilt.
Keywords: alterity; harm; inscription; neo-primitive; sacrifice; self; surface; theodicy

Prelude
This post-structuralist composition deconstructs, and reworks, the phenomenon of self harm
in relation to contemporary work organizations. The impending discussion considers how
the complex and indeterminate phenomenon of self harm is both desired (e.g. utility) and
resisted (e.g. diminished) in multiple ways during the denouement of organizational life.
But this is most definitely not a dialectical relation. In short, self harm indicates how organizing remains beset by alterity, aporia, and doubling. But most crucially, self harm is also
an ethical gift, which arises during (in-between) critical events of self- questioning (e.g. loss
of self) and questioning of self (e.g. identity). As will be discussed, this is some thing
which poses a risk and threat to a contemporary organizational ethos which demands
competition, efficiency, repeated organizational and personal transformation, for example.
With this in mind, self harm is a phenomenon which is integral to clinical medical practice
(e.g. psychiatry, nursing) and therapeutic intervention (e.g. counselling, psychotherapy).
Examples include visibly distressing instances of self destructive or inflicted behaviour such
as wrist and forearm cutting (Suyemoto 1998). Also, self harm is a cultural and historical
feature of different human societies. For example, symbols, rituals and practices of self
harm (e.g. clitoroidectomy, circumcision, tattooing) remain banal historical features in
African tribes, Muslim and South-Pacific countries (Favazza 1987, 191; Taylor 1997, 87;
*Email: lloyd.gray@anglia.ac.uk
ISSN 1475-9551 print/ISSN 1477-2760 online
2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14759550802079291
http://www.informaworld.com

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Clarke and Whittaker 1998, 130). Yet, there are multiple different and evolving meanings
and practices associated with self harm (see for example McAlister 2003; Muehlenkamp
2005). These include body modification, blood letting, self injury, self mutilation, self
maiming, skin cutting, alcohol abuse and eating disorders. In addition to these clinicalmedico and anthropological concerns, self harm is also indelibly linked to theology and
the Judaeo-Christian scriptures in the New Testament (see for example Moore 1996; Clark
and Whittaker 1998). Distinctively, apparent here is a banal aphorism, and also a practical
managerial discursive account (Woolf 1991; Doughty 2001) no pain no gain. Pain and
suffering have subsequently become admissible as inevitable for the purposes of progress
(e.g. achievement, change, creation, development, solution). What also emerges here is how
self harm is also a historicalmetaphysical concern; or more correctly, a concern of what
Martin Heidegger (see Mallik 2000) calls ontotheology. And this is hardly irrelevant or
unrelated to the study of organizing. At stake here is how many contemporary organizational discourses, and practices, such as workplace spirituality are very much connected to
self, management, and organizational development. As just suggested, progress then is very
much implicated in unfolding concerns about life (theology) and living (ontology).
This initial connection of self harm to work, management and organizing is perhaps
not unsurprising, recent or novel. For example, in Greek society work and labour was
associated with hard painful toil (ponos/ponoi) and slavery (see for example, Arendt 1958,
83n8; Scarry 1985, 169; Grint 1998, 15; Womack 2005, 272, 291n60). In contrast to the
harmful (see ten Bos 2000, 158; Kaulingfreks 2005, 3744) inferences that may be drawn
from work/labour as causing pain and becoming dominated, ponos/ponoi doubles in
recourse to the father of medicine Hippocrates. Toil also means, through Hippocrates, the
fight or resistance against the body in disease. Through work, the bodily irritations and side
effects of life/living may seemingly be offset, justified and diminished. Two prominent
narratives arise here. Both have implications for how we understand work, management and
organization. They are the utility/utilization of pain (see Burrell 1997, 181), and the
diminution of pain or controlled discomfort (Scarry 1985, 171). Both are strongly linked to
homeostasis or self regulation (McLuhan 1964, 98). Pursuing and developing this theme a
little further, it has been suggested that self harm is something that we ourselves desire,
need, and even collude with, through a seeming quasi-masochistic process. Julian Randall
and Iain Munro (2007, 3031) suggest that self harm arises in relation to effects of stressful flexible working and organizing. One might consider here, for example, the affects and
experiences of change, competition, increasing workloads and demands. Yet intriguingly,
they suggest self harm expresses our desirous will to power, and the vitalism (see Lohman
and Stayaert 2006) of feeling alive and in control. Upon this reading, self harm has two
further possible dimensions. Firstly, self harm may be considered to be ethical, revealing
our lively struggle and striving to persevere and persist (Spinoza 1955, 136137) in the
face or mirror of difficult unforeseen and changing circumstances. However, as will be
discussed below, this is not without dispute. Secondly, self harm also expresses the differentiating affects, which continually disrupt the selfs cohesion, of erotic qua cum ecstatic
(Bataille 1987, 267; Taylor 1997, 131; Robinson 2003, 120; Olkoswki 2007, 94) ambivalent
experiences/sensations; where, for example, pain and pleasure, love and hate, joy and anger
occur simultaneously; yet inconsistently.
So, upon reflection, self harm is therefore a complex and indeterminate phenomenon,
which defies the categorization and boundaries either of organic representational epistemology or the actual denouement of lived praxis. During this paper, self harm is directly
probed through recourse to the aforementioned two genealogical narratives concerning the
utility and diminution of pain in organizational life. In a forewarning, these two narratives

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do not exist in a dialectical relationship. Crucial to this papers immanent problematic is a

critical questioning of dialectical relations, and the historical lineage of the erudite dialectical tradition. This tradition stems, for example, from the Socratic/Platonic metaphysics
through to the neoHegelian psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, and neokantian (business)
ethics. At the risk of oversimplification, this tradition prosecutes the belief in the resolution
and synthesis of opposites (e.g. differences, contradictions, paradox, ambivalence) through
the application of a priori solutions. As already indicated, and now proceeding further, the
utility/utilization and the diminution of pain appear to be immanent to processes of organizational life. Therefore, reflecting on the aforementioned genealogical and anthropological
aspects, self harm is inexplicable, and also constantly changing or becoming different. For
example, how we try to make sense of our self and lived experiences, as we are constantly
affected by our surroundings. With this in mind, self harm will be considered as a dynamic
and non-integratable and non-dialectical repetitious becoming, which is an immanent affect
and effect which occurs during multiple emergent processes of what I will call neo-primitive
organizing. In turn, this paper will be delivered over three main interrelated sections.
The paper opens through a deeper engagement with the relationship between ontotheology and organizing. During this opening gambit, I reveal how multiple managerial practices
and techniques of cutting and inscription are applied during contemporary organizational
regeneration programmes. It is argued that the consequential side-effects, of these practices become justified as a necessary evil to achieve progress. In short, this is dependent
upon a specific and myopic calculative thematic of organizational living (ontology) and life
(theology). However, the implausibility and impossibility of inductive and deductive theological aporias (e.g. death of God, sacrifice, ascesis) are constantly discounted through
theodicy. Theodicy becomes a repetitious and diffuse issue during the denouement of this
paper. I then connect theodicy to what I consider to be neo-primitive organizing. I engage
here primarily with the working of Victor Li (2006). Specifically, I probe in more detail the
aforementioned nascent genealogical relation between work/management/organizing and
progress. This section affords a space to disclose how progress, through organizing, is
implicated by the profound aporia. Primitive and savage cultural impulses, symbols, rituals
and practices (e.g. cutting, scarification, circumcision) are represented in/by the western
imagination, and embodied sensibilities, as an anathema to the ordering or western life and
conduct through industrial systems and practices of rationality, control and efficiency. And
yet, the goodness of rationality, control and efficiency are contaminated by the overt and
innocuous inscription, harming and cutting of bodies. As the absurd non-dialectic relation
between the utility and diminution of pain suggests, the primitivism and savagery of self
harm requires stabilization through essential quasi-analgesic symbolic and theodicean relations of disavowal (e.g. diminution) and re-inscription (e.g. utility). From this, the paper
then attends to this occurrence and praxis of self harm in neo-primitive organizing.
Incorporating, and appreciating, the non-dialectical philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, I petition
that self harm occurs, in contemporary organizing, through multiple emergent processes and
practices that are quasi/neo-masochistic in affect and effect. As alluded to previously, the
present ethos of organizing is indicted by discourses of competition, flexibility and
change; and unsettling experiences such as anxiety, tension and pressure. In response to
these observations, discussion attends to how, during organizational activities, the body is
worked, modified and lacerated by impersonal, virtual and anonymous forces or affects
which expose the exteriority of life/living. Here, it is discussed how self harm is both desirable (painful work as pleasure, catharsis) and undesirable (ethical questioning, painful
affects). The upshot of this deconstruction is the disclosure of how self harm is implicated
by multiple non dialectical relations of self questioning (loss of self), questioning of self

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(identity) and confirmation of self (simulacra). Consulting Emmanuel Levinas (1990, 75)
here, self-harm is entertained as entailing a latent dynamic relationship between aesthetical sensibility (flesh) and ethics (alterity). In relaxing the paper, I discuss how this ethical
possibility is constantly absolved and repressed through processes of theodicy, simulacra,
and exclusion/dismemberment. The upshot of this impending discussion will be how self
harm as the affect and effect of organizational alterity (e.g. surplus and excess) is in
multiple ways always becoming desired and repressed, on the surface or flesh of organizational life.
Ontotheology
From this initial exegesis, I begin to consider this genealogical relationship between selfharm, work and organization, by revisiting what Martin Heidegger (see for example,
Weiss 1989, 167; Mallik 2000) affirmed as ontotheology. The non-dialectical relation
between the utilization and the diminution of pain is most definitely connected, in different
ways, to theological concerns such as creation and the birth of life; the possibility of
redemption and salvation; and the natural design, purpose and development of the world/
civilization (whole). Developing the initial insight from above, organizing is becoming
associated with neoPlatonic religio-spiritual discourses such as commitment, passion,
creation, meaning and the soul (Bunting 2004). This updates and invigorates the genealogical relation between religion and capitalism, as explicated, for example, in the sociology of
Max Weber (e.g. work ethic, asceticism).1 Yet, also apparent here is the attempt through
work/the purpose of work to determine life and phenomena. As previously intimated,
through work the wider irritations of embodied life (e.g. uncertainty) might possibly be
repressed. This subordination of the differences (parts) of earthly life and phenomena to
transcendent objectives (e.g. work goals), and subsequent determination, by objective
knowledge (e.g. symbolic representation) is therefore also ontological. I turn here to the
work of Robert Chia and Jannis Kallinikos (1998, 134135), on the etymology and
substance of organization. This will provide a further clarification of the genealogical relationship between ontotheology and organizing. Organization pertains to organ(s) (parts),
ergon (work/labour), and organism (whole). Organizations of different kinds are seemingly
dependent upon the use, and application, of different types of instruments or tools (organs)
in order to function and produce (work); this requires the open-ended repetitious exchange
and interaction with the earth/world for survival and regeneration (organism). However, the
apparent underlying deductive and dialectical logic of ontotheological relations, such as
exchange and regeneration, is highly questionable. In a non-dialectical juxtaposition, relations of exchange and regeneration are countered, and doubled, by immanent and decadent
relations of cutting. As Gilles Deleuze (1990, 8), Jacques Derrida (1998, 89) and Friedrich
Nietzsche (1996, 61) have observed, regeneration occurs decadently, through/from reversible affects and effects which arise through/from the processes and actions of cutting
(woundscar); and moreover punishment.
One might consider how the discourses and practices of organizing have increasingly
become associated with cutting, dividing and reform/regeneration (e.g. progress). Reform
has occurred where, for example, large-scale commercial organizations have been restructured, and divided into individual strategic business units SBUs. Different parts of the organization are constantly becoming directed, and monitored, from a corporate centre (HQ).
Reform has also occurred through changing patterns of ownership and corporate governance (e.g. mergers, private equity, management buy-outs); and underpinned by practices
and discourses including those of delayering, downsizing, modernization, and becoming fit

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for purpose. Alternatively, public sector and cultural organizations/institutions (e.g. arts,
music, medical, education) are also becoming reformed, through the increasing involvement
of private sector commercial organizations (e.g. investment) and commercial practices (e.g.
management techniques). These discourses and practices of reform have been prosecuted in
the search of, for example, capital liquidity/profitability; efficiencies/best value; market/
strategic competitiveness; and transparency (e.g. identify underperformance). The need for
efficiency, profitability and performativity has been accompanied by widespread banal
discourses, aphorisms and accounts. For example, cut-backs or budget-cuts (Aherns
1996); cutting corners (Munro 1999); savage job cuts (Thornton 2007); and undercutting (Cheffins and Armour 2007).
In continuum, the experiences of, and affects upon, those who are being cut (e.g. managers), and inscribed, by/through organizational reform(s) are arguably becoming associated
with, for example, fears of job loss (e.g. job insecurity); increasing and intensifying
demands and uncertainty (e.g. workload, pressure); the professionalization or government
of anger and conduct (e.g. emotional intelligence, self management); and status anxiety (e.g.
loss of self/identity). For those on the receiving end, these virtual affects and forces (e.g.
cuts) are far from imaginary or illusory (e.g. not experienced). And yet, something more
distinctive is evident at this threshold. Quite remarkably, these aforementioned instances,
such as ruthlessness (e.g. savage job cuts) and threat of exclusion (e.g. job loss/insecurity),
do most definitely affirm, and confirm, Nietzsches primitive (1996, 6061) valuation that
human relations of exchange and debt are inevitable to life (theology) and living (ontology).
It is clearly apparent that contemporary organizational regeneration is replete with increases
in fear and ruthlessness (e.g. downsizing), the regulation of desires (e.g. conduct), and the
perfection of prudence (e.g. efficiency). We discover very clearly here what Nietzsche
affirmed as punishment; and the infliction, and systemic determination of harm and cruelty
on/during life. Regeneration, punishment and cutting2 are techniques of power (e.g. domination, privilege) and perfection (purify races, breeds, groups). Namely, utilized and applied
in the attempt to render and inoculate someone (e.g. opponent, competitor) or some part
(e.g. business unit, team, group) harmless3 (i.e. risk management). They reveal the effective
performances and affects of hierarchy, force and inequality. Through Nietzsche, it may be
strongly suggested that the banal and routine infliction of pain and suffering, during human
relations, serve literally as constant inscriptive reminders or a mnemonics of pain (Weiss
1989, 36; Grosz 1994, 131). These examples of job insecurity, etc., reveal how the collective memory, routines and morals of organizing require people to be lacking (e.g. surplus to
requirements) and guilty (e.g. responsible for failure). Lack, debt and guilt symbolize
culturally, and theologically, that which is profane, contemptuous and forbidden.4 Distinctively, this is an ontotheological metaphysic, where the sacrifice5 of people (e.g. downsizing) as things (e.g. surplus resources) restores the sacred (e.g. strategic goals); and
diminishes or severs connections with the profane and degraded. A unique Hegelian theodicy becomes apparent at this point. The growing pains (utility) of organizational transformation can be justified, and diminished, through recourse to rational justification.
Executives, accountants and consultants, for example as avant garde reformers of organizational life, can absolve their actions through recourse to clearly identifiable factors, and
threats, such as external competition (Hine 2007, 362) and the need for reform. In this sense,
the painful institution of collective organizational memory, routines and reform may be
dismissed, and belittled as a necessary evil. This is indeed extremely questionable, as Jones,
Parker and ten Bos (2005, 59, 181) have suggested. In turn, this requires the living body to
disappear, become obsolete or radically altered (e.g. suffering does not exist here or out
there; suffer in silence), or to become a stable construct of the ideal imagination (e.g. image,

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category).6 We discover here how reality is becoming (e.g. for leaders, consultants) a
virtual imaginary simulacra, where all references to enigmatic instabilities (e.g. living body,
identity) might be finally marginalized (see for example Cooper 1993, 301306). Following Mark C. Taylor (1997, 139, 207), these processes and (mental) operations disclose how
the enigmatic living body becomes temporarily hidden, crucified and resurrected as something which is palatable, unproblematic and easy to consume/digest. As we will encounter
shortly, this is highly problematic. However, this does affirm how the body is cut and
inscribed in other seemingly innocuous ways, for the purpose of concealing or hiding that
which might be unpalatable for/to the aforementioned leading hierarchical reformers of
organizing. This is indeed far from rational, because it affirms the stupidity of (Socratic)
ignorance and the limits of empathy for example. Through such processes, the pain and
suffering of the other/outside may become diminished. At this critical-ethical point, I
introduce the term neo-primitive organizing.
Neo-primitive organizing
It may be gathered from Friedrich Nietzsches second essay delivered during On the genealogy of morals (1996, 5152), that exchange relations (e.g. barter, trade) of credit/debt,
selling/buying, and surplus/lack are indelibly linked to the primitive foundations, origins
and essence of civilization. Yet as just suggested, these and other different features of
contemporary post-bureaucratic organizing (e.g. commitment, contract, rights) were
evident, albeit in different insipid forms (Smith 2005) for example, in affiliation and alliance kinship relations in Neanderthal primitive/savage cultures (see, for example, Deleuze
and Guattari 1983). It may be considered how contemporary organizing depends upon both
the exclusion and inclusion of primitivism. It is what Victor Li (2006, ix) has termed neoprimitivism or anti-primitivist primitivism. This is not very far from the utility and
diminution of pain aporia, where pain is necessary (e.g. no pain, no gain); but also must be
diminished whether through catharsis7 (e.g. relief, meet ones goals) or theodicy, for
example. Through Li, the ontotheology of modernity (progress, rationality) can only be
claimed and sought by simultaneously disavowing and re-inscribing the primitive (e.g.
fashion, body art, chaos, formless). Li (2006, 45) enlists Agambens notion of inclusive
exclusion to epitomize these absurd non-dialectical processes. There are always repetitious
non-integratable excesses, surpluses, or differences which constantly emerge to undermine
and expose; for example, the possibility of closure and finality. In short, claims to progress
are always becoming countered by primitive or uncouth affects, forces and experiences.8
Yet, through Nietzsche (1996), Li (2006), and Mark C. Taylor (1997, 97107) we discover
how the primitive is spectral and without history, infinitely resurfacing; and also a myth and
construction of the western imagination perpetuated in an attempt to secure its own foundations (e.g. categorize otherness; more civilized and better than other less developed). Therefore, the primitive doubles as an object (e.g. category, symbol, classification) of inductive
and deductive logic. Those, inscribed as other (e.g. surplus to requirements, non-conformity), can be sacrificed, or expended, in the name of a higher purpose or calling (e.g. efficiency, flexibility, objectivity, profit). As such, those experiencing job insecurity are
constantly exposed to becoming a spent force, and living on the edge. These multiple,
and continuous, attempts in post-bureaucratic organizing which require (utility) and modify
(diminish) the primitive living or becoming body, in multiple ways, is what I term neoprimitive organizing. In process, I build here on the previous observations of Gibson Burrell
(1997, 184) and Elizabeth Grosz (1994, 141) that savage acts of harm and cruelty are immanent and recurrent to western styles of organizing, and institutions (e.g. hospitals, prisons)

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whether overtly (e.g. bullying) or less conspicuously (e.g. cultural norms, accounts,
simulacra). Following Antonin Artaud (1999, 7779), we should therefore not restrict our
understanding of cruelty and harm to a savage/primitive scene of bloodshed or visible
bodily laceration.
Self, harm and control
As entertained above, contemporary post-bureaucratic organizing is constantly preoccupied
with regeneration and reform. Arguably, in juxtaposition with concerns for change, competition, and flexibility, a particular emphasis upon the self, subjectivity and identity has arisen
in the contemporary discourses and practices of organizing. The need for so-called human
resources9 to constantly learn, change, find meaning, develop and grow,10 in order to realize
and demonstrate their talent and potential, have become implicated in the notions of self
development. Distinctively, self development is connected with multiple issues. Self
development is strategic (e.g. realize hidden potential of human resource); spiritual (e.g.
fulfilment, meaning, devotion); therapeutic (e.g. well-being); and mastery (e.g. competence). The self has also been directly made to belong together (see Heidegger 1969) with
management; and firmly made to belong in11/with the world of customer-centric postbureaucratic organizing. This is inscribed through a specific political and commercial ontotheologic the responsibilization of the self (du Gay, Salaman and Rees 1996, 271).
Through different forms of individual and collective participation (e.g. action learning, six
sigma) managers, and other employees, could/may seemingly be empowered to go beyond,
or required to transgress, the limitations of formal organization (e.g. rules, regulations,
contracts); but equally repair the damages to, and limitations of, organization (e.g. unexpected customer complaints; product defects; inefficiencies). Responsibilization, in contemporary post-bureaucratic forms of participation, entails multiple contracts (e.g. budgets,
hierarchy, objectives). In exchange for new life-affirming opportunities, managers and other
employees must become responsible and accountable for their actions and conduct. Here,
we discover, most definitely, the ethical action (virtue) of giving and generosity, evinced as
the gift of empowerment and the generosity of freedom from hierarchical constraint. This
neoAristotelian gift12 is indeed also tied to cultivation of character (e.g. self development).
But as Rosalyn Diprose (2002, 2) has suggested, this is a form of contract and reciprocal
obligation where the gift is reduced to a calculable thing, commodity or object. Therefore,
the gift participation and freedom is underscored by an expectation of a return on investment; and subsequent attempted defining and limiting of freedom. We encounter again the
commercial exchange relations, of neo-primitive organizing. The individual or group (e.g.
SBU) that receives these gifts, and licensing of freedom, become indebted to the donor (e.g.
hierarchy). Appreciating the work of Martin Heidegger (1962, H281282) here, responsibility (e.g. self management) entails having debts, being guilty and owing/lacking something. In short, the self becomes a priori constantly amenable to/liable for punishment,
retribution and harm, by virtue of participation in practices of organization; and any future
failure to meet agreed or unforeseen expectations. Immanent here, is the Platonicdialectic
problem of participation (Ansell Pearson 2001, 238). Responsibilization infers and confers
the ready-made expectation/presupposition that people will fit into,13 and also conform and
belong to, constantly changing organizational arrangements and designs. As such, everybody will be a part or organ of organizing. In turn, everybody will also imitate and embody
the approach, expectations (e.g. delivery) and objectives of organization. For example, to
become more efficient; to work harder; or meet and deliver ones imposed targets and goals.
And finally, but perhaps more disturbingly, participation also entails being a recipient of

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unpalatable affects and experiences (e.g. insecurity; no pain, no gain). The difficulty here is
that participation and responsibilization of the self can only be legitimated through an
ontotheological belief in progress. The material and sensible (e.g. affects, pain, harm, chaos)
must be displaced and controlled by the intelligible and immaterial (e.g. objectivity, form);
namely, that which resists change, and is solid (see Irigaray 1993, 3455). As suggested
previously, this requires supplementation (Derrida 1976, 281) or aid of an ambivalent neoprimitive ontotheological Hegelian theodicy of the utility and diminution of pain (Taylor
1997, 105, 109; Neiman 2002, 8898), to temporarily overcome this enigmatic aporia (see,
for example, Weiss 1989).
Self development and self management are both strongly implicated with the need and
obligation for self control and self mastery. Harm, therefore, must be carefully controlled,
and strategically integrated with organizational objectives (e.g. utility, purpose). For example, indeterminate passions such as anger and rudeness are not only immanent to organizing,
as instances of the primitive and uncouth. They are also actively becoming desired, reinscribed, and attributed the discursive status of goodness (e.g. commodity, production);
rather than emitting harmful and decadent effects. The partial and imprecise resolution and
domestication of anger and rudeness occur, repeatedly, during normal civilized workplace
practices. From Catherine Dale (2000, 231) we discover how aggressive selling (e.g. coldcalling), and the skills to drive a hard bargain in workplace negotiations (e.g. unions,
individual pay rise), are banal instances of how anger and rudeness have been transformed
and re-valued, historically. Alienation and despair previously contributed to changing how
work was organized, in some organizations.14 Arguably, anger and rudeness have become a
requirement for participation in competitive organizing, and confirmation of the competent
self. Seminal to this is the availability and use of neo-primitive technologies of inscription
(e.g. writing, accounts, workplace noise, sounds, images, symbols, bodily contact) to
impose, code and groom15 objective differences on bodies, according to sex, race, status,
position, performance, relationship, etc. (see Grosz 1994). Therefore, current ideals such as
commitment (e.g. devotion) and strategic entrepreneurial behaviour (e.g. aggression,
assertiveness, competitiveness, taking risks, opportunism) are connected to the competent
self; a self whose categories represent, and might possibly confirm, the seeming objective
essence and differences of masculinity (see, for example, Fournier 2002; Pullen 2006). One
might consider categories, and details, such as toughness, hardness, and resistance to
material existence/experiences. Endemic here is the aforementioned spiritual demand for
ascesis or self denial; or denial of self in servitude to multiple otherworldly ontotheological
beings and goods quasi-Gods, leadership profit, targets, customer, change, etc.
In contradistinction, self harm is primitive the power of the false (see note 5). As
suggested during this papers initial exegesis, and now again through Catherine Dale (2000,
231), uncontrolled self harm is a phenomenon that refuses control, objectification, explanation, and fixed meaning. Neuroticism, depression and suicide as instances of uncontrolled
and inexplicable anger and passion are constructed, in/through clinico-medical discourses,
to become pathological (see, for example, Foucault 2003). Self harm therefore remains
inexplicable (e.g. recurrent) and undecidable (e.g. meaning); a non-integratable excess or
surplus which refuses to withdraw from the immanence of becoming. As Victor Li (2006)
similarly suggests, primitive practices of self mutilation are something which are deemed
to be unethical, uncivilized and backward;16 in short, the ontotheological affirmation (e.g.
revelation) and confirmation (e.g. truth) of identity and difference, good and bad, true and
false, etc. So, self and harm must be constantly disavowed (e.g. denied, displaced,
rejected) and re-inscribed (e.g. competent self, status, authentic workplace, participation).
However, I turn at this point to Spinozas (1955, 136 IV) profound proposition that self

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destruction or harm is actually an absurd statement. It is a statement which deductively

presupposes that the self is immaterial (e.g. idea), abstract (e.g. otherworldly); unaffected
by and disconnected from emergent material relations (e.g. earth). Therefore, the self literally may spontaneously combust and implode. The self harms only itself. The conscious self
becomes ontological (a being in itself), theological (a being for itself) and dismembered
(e.g. mindbody division). This is what David Boothroyd (2000, 201) has termed autoaffection or auto-mutilation, and requires the actual practice of self questioning and the
turning of anger and hatred of the world inwards.
As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1983, 235) have divulged, lack, debt and guilt is
constantly produced, desired and insinuated in different ways, through multiple non-linear
connections, in the exchange relations of capitalism. This requires the aforementioned workings and playfulness of simulacra, where blame and guilt can become fixed or inscribed onto
(disembodied) individuals and groups. Failure to fulfil ones obligations therefore equates
with ownership; or possession by literally becoming entrepreneurial and taking risk. As
David Boothroyd (2000) suggests, the horror and perversity of the outside world becomes
all of my own making. Consequently, implosion is required. We discover here the dialectical problem of the demonic (Ansell Pearson 2001), or the monstrous surplus and excess
which escapes or resists intelligibility. Invoking Spinoza, destruction emerges as an effect
of/from the infinite becoming of anonymous exterior forces and affects; the effects of
destruction are experienced through irreducible decomposition of relations (e.g. implosion).
Arguably, we experience, and affirm, harm through what I will call the evil of necessity.17
Bodily experiences most definitely affect, and disturb, the minds cognate image of self
control, and homeostasis (bodily organization). Quite simply, we experience otherness.
Therefore, we encounter an alternative understanding of self questioning as ethical; a
comprehension that brings into question the ontotheology of self control and control of self.
Body and flesh
The construction of the self and subsequent attachment to organization and work is nothing
new. As Gibson Burrell (1997, 199) observed, the notion of self-made man is indelibly
conjoined with commercial success (e.g. mastery, affluence, wealth). In turn, it may be
considered how this symbolic order of selfhood (e.g. control, competent, performance, categories) is dependent upon securing and confirming its own ground/foundations the living
body. As suggested above, inscriptions of various kinds do occur within organizations to
impose a symbolic order upon, and modify the body (e.g. gender, hierarchy). One only need
consult Michel Foucaults (1973) The order of things to appreciate how the symbolic order
of representation (e.g. objective knowledge, genetic analysis), which arose during the Classical age (e.g. Cartesian philosophy), is dependent upon the material act (lived body,
subject), and ideal (e.g. self centred) of representing. Yet, the living body is in constant
movement (e.g. even when asleep); the body constitutes a dynamic multiplicity or assemblage of different passions, sensations, thoughts, experiences (e.g. see Grosz 1994). But
these actual sensations, thoughts and experiences are the deferred surface effects of/from the
subliminal virtual affects that we have actually experienced (past). The body is constantly,
therefore, behind affects; yet always ahead of representations. In this sense, the body is
primitive but not an original or duplicate; it is a surface or singularity that repeatedly
resists isolation, and targeting by/through systems of codification, management and regulation (e.g. Grosz 1994; Pitts 2003). This temporal metaphysic of past (e.g. behind) and future
(ahead), brings to life what Dorothea Olkowski (2002, 17) intimated as affective contraction; and also invokes Ron Days (1998, 95107) appreciation of diagrammatic bodies.

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Dorothea Olkowski invites an awareness of how our immediate and spontaneous (preobjective) experiences of/during life are of multiple and anonymous affects or phenomenal
things. These new things/forces affect and disrupt the body. The lived present literally
contracts, and collides with past experiences (e.g. memories) and thoughts (e.g. mind).
Moreover, these new experiences, and constant changes, decentre the self. They pull/move
us towards, and open us to, new possibilities (e.g. future). From Ron Days erudition, we
may gather that this is indeed primitive yet resonant of Nietzsches pre-history or Deleuzes
anti-genealogy. Past, present and future become juxtaposed in a non-dialectical duration. In
contrast to dialectical understandings of the body and self (narcissistic) as lacking, and in
debt, here we discover how the self is implicated by a body that is free, and outside of
rational organization. We discover here how the body is without fixed and unchanging
organs and identity. The depths of life are constantly becoming diagrammatically (re)drawn,
and projected (see Derrida 1998) out from human and non-human bodies. We discover on
the surface the affects, effects and traces of life/living, and non-geometric depth. For example, traces (e.g. aged body, otherness, sociality, tiredness) and gestures (e.g. body language)
are intense diagrammatic surface affects and effects of hidden irreducible depths and intensive connections. As Gilles Deleuze (1990, 10) invoked, echoing Paul Valery, what is most
deep is the skin. The cutting of skin reveals how the body is constantly disguised, disfigured and modified (in flight) through the production and depletion of layers (e.g. wound,
scab). Therefore, the body is neither an original nor a copy, contra neoPlatonic dialectics;
the body emerges through wild primitive states of becoming (e.g. change, multiplicity,
different experiences). These multiple and unceasing affects of experiences constantly
undermine (e.g. re-inscribe, counter affects) mimetic and narcissistic representations of the
self (e.g. performing, competent, managerial).
Being in a skin
Acknowledging how the body is constantly becoming produced (modification) indicates
how the skin, and flesh, are more than simply fixed biological organs such as corpuscles and
membranes; or merely comprised of dermatological layers or surface covering. The skin
may be considered according to Patricia MacCormacks (2006, 7677) Lyotardian understanding of the skin as ephemeral and immanent; the skin which defies fixed meaning,
possession, and signification (e.g. self) yet is in constant reversible contact with the outside.
The skin includes, and presupposes multiple visible and invisible possibilities, and affects,
such as thoughts, representations, inscriptions, feelings, blemishes, etc. In short, the skin
exposes differences, intensities and irreducible depth. Arguably, this becoming drawn out is
an affect, and effect, of our aesthetic carnal sensibility which discloses our ethical potential
for unconditional sacrifice, giving to, and generous concern for others. Harming or injuring
the body may invoke an ethical non-cognitive response/reaction (e.g. offence, disgust,
revulsion). As both Levinas and Merleau Ponty18 (see Levin, 1998) highlighted, our initial
encounters with worldly phenomena are sensational, pre-objective and embodied. Any
theoretical and calculative evaluation and reflection (e.g. logical judgements; sovereign
decision) of events and phenomena occur after this initial primordial encounter/contact or
affective contraction. Prominent to this is the relation between sensibility and ethics. These
primitive ethical and meontological experiences can never be absolutely effaced, denied or
ignored. Arguably, ethics emerges through experiences of self questioning and loss of self.
What impresses from this relation is that ethical action just happens (without thinking) in
movement (e.g. when we literally might rush to the aid of someone in a road accident).
Ethical action, therefore, occurs beyond, and precedes (meontology), the confines of any

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symbolic order, regulatory or cognate prohibition. Moreover, this does not involve a narcissistic sensibility of seeking gratification or return (e.g. need, reciprocity); of becoming
indebted (e.g. lack); or following any prescribed course of action and regulating the self
(e.g. symbolic order). An alternative non-dialectical and calculative ontotheological appreciation of responsibility, obligation and vulnerability underpins this recourse to/through the
sensibility (skin)ethics (alterity) relation. It is this radical decentring of the flesh, through
our contact with others (both human and non-human) which contests, and disturbs, the
demand and pursuit of self interested forms (e.g. instrumental, hedonistic) of behaviour and
organizing; and also thematic constructions and representations of the self which emphasize, and require the human to be/become a resource, thing (Bataille 1988) or object (Townley 1994). Given this estimation, it is perhaps unsettling that we discover how organizations
actively seek not only to inscribe the skin;19 but also both disavow (efface) and re-inscribe
(inscribe) this primitive ethical action of alterity. As suggested earlier, through the idea of
the self, actual participation in contemporary organizing requires and desires conduct which
is competitive, resilient and tough. For example, demonstrations of conduct (e.g. competence) that confirms people are coping with the affects of organizing; are able to endure
and deliver organizing; and are also becoming hardened to organized life/living. In short,
people are able to belong, and participate, in the world of organizing. This is very clearly
evident from Alison Pullens (2006) empirical study of middle managers in a post-bureaucratic manufacturing company.
From Alison Pullens research, it becomes apparent how the ethical vulnerability of the
body, and the symbolic order of the self, is constantly negotiated and offset by a calculative
economy, and game, of sacrifice and saving oneself (Derrida 1995, 87, 9495). Notoriously,
the aporia of the utility and diminution of pain resurface. The experiences of the middle
managers were highly ambivalent. Performances were required where managers participated in a (virtual) corporate narcissistic game of appearing to conform to organizational
objectives and adapt to change. Self sacrifice and ascesis were also required in response to
the threat of redundancy, loss of career, and to confirm the quasi-veracity of ontotheological
organizational objectives. This entailed, for example, the sacrifice of ones other possible
alternative ethical relations of collective devotion and authenticity (e.g. family). Apparent
here is how the (managerial) embodied self is constantly tortured or twisted by multiple and
different competing inscriptions and intense forces (e.g. job insecurity, identity, change,
competition, gender, personal life, different authorities). This radical alteration of the person
(me) is relational. Very much tied to the radical alteration of collective life (e.g. organizational regeneration). Here organizational members stand to simultaneously, yet infinitely,
lose (death) and gain (life). The intersection of sacrifice, torture, and radical alteration/transgression bear testament to, and pronounce, what Georges Bataille deems to be self mutilation (see for example Hussey 2000; Marcel 2003); a quasi-suicide/castration and unethical
defacement that entails a loss of self; something which Alison Pullen confirmed. We also
encounter here what Martin Heidegger (1962, H126130) termed The They. The experiences and affects of change, competition, performativity, for example, can be justified,
through recourse to objective accounts, as necessary for the survival of the wider collective
(The They). As such, self mutilation becomes normalized, and necessary in contemporary
organization. And uniquely, the intimacy and proximity of the skin has become crucial to
this attempted normalizing, discounting and effacement of self harm/mutilation (e.g.
theodicy, simulacra).
As Alison Pullen (2006, 169) announced, participation required imitation20 (e.g. impression management), intelligibility (e.g. justification) and the need to maintain appearances
(e.g. professionalization of anger) in the exterior face of adversity. This literally cut across

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gender differences. The masculine and managerial self, as previously suggested, was highly
valued and prized in the requirements for commitment, coping, competence and constant
justification of own value (e.g. worth, contribution); namely in order to defer the immanent
spectre of sacrifice (e.g. job loss, exclusion from work, loss of identity). These performances disclose the symbolic value of being thick skinned in contemporary strategic neoprimitive organizing. For example, demonstrating indifference not only to the impending
threat of sacrifice (e.g. me next); but also empathically to the plight of those around you
(e.g. victims of downsizing);21 and one might additionally instantiate become impervious to
the stupidity and absurdity of such a seemingly rationally organized setting (e.g. efficiency,
logical arguments, rational objectives). As Paul Heggartys (2003, 103) engagement with
Bataille entertained, becoming ridiculous and risibility are also features of sacrifice, and
harming, which arise in connection with the desire to escape the primitive untamed limits
(e.g. contingency, finitude) of human individualization.
It is not too difficult to find evidence, in contemporary post-bureaucratic organizing,
of how organized attempts (e.g. goals, targets, objectives, strategies) to push the body to
the limit, are met by bodily resistances (e.g. counter inscriptions). Different kinds of pain
and suffering have been connected to participation in post-bureaucratic organizing. Alison
Pullen revealed how the different painful affects and effects (e.g. anxiety, exhaustion,
tiredness, fatigue, insecurity, bitterness, resentment and betrayal) are seemingly becoming
required, and necessary, for the performance of the managerial self and the maintenance
of organizational objectives and order. Similarly, through the work of Peter Lohmann and
Chris Stayaert (2006), it becomes apparent in another market based post-bureaucratic
organizational change programme, that people were required to endure the similar uncertainty of a protracted process of top-down change (e.g. the suffering, and longing of
waiting22). People experienced the pain of exhaustion (long working hours, excessive
demands); problems and miseries of coping and implosion (tears); and the inflamed
passions of struggling over the implications, consequences, and theodicy of change (e.g.
flexible working, role of HR, downsizing). Despite this, there was also indifference and
carelessness, emitted through the aforementioned economy of saving oneself; and additionally the simulacra and diminution of pain, through hierarchy in action at a distance.
Notably, the employees were not involved as participants (excluded from) in the actual
decisions that would impact upon, and very much affect, them. Through this downsizing,
the head-count was reduced, and underperforming divisions (e.g. SBUs) were rendered
harmless (sold, extinguished). In due course, the living experiencing flesh and blood
bodies may be made to disappear (e.g. out of sight, out of mind). The living body, literally, through this corporate regeneration is becoming discounted (e.g. kitsch), and
rendered profane.
Suicided by neo-primitive societies of control
Let us now consider again, more closely, the following aforementioned features. The economy of saving oneself (e.g. selfishness), superstition (e.g. commitment, devotion, spirituality, sacrifice), and latterly desire (e.g. will to power) are becoming repeatedly practised in
hope of guaranteeing collective survival (e.g. regeneration). Alive here, is a strange pact;
which is dependent upon the expenditure of all forms of surplus and excess (e.g.
unresolved, indeterminate, disorder). But notably, the crucial difference in the repetition of
this pact is a mutual fear of the outside or life. This pact is arguably an inverse carnivalesque
relation between slave and tyrant (Marks 1998, 65); or slave and master (Smith 2005, 26
27). Arguably the affective essence and quality of this relation is quasi masochistic. And

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this discloses how all organizational members are not absolutely free. As John Marks (1998)
revealed, the tyrant or master (e.g. CEO, leaders, consultant) must engage in myth-making,
Machiavellian cunning and trickery in order to literally remain the sovereign (a-head). We
may also see how notions of therapy (e.g. catharsis)23 and spirituality (e.g. ascesis) operate
as guises for renewed domination in neo-primitive processes of post-bureaucratic organizing. Through the delegation of a superstitious quasi-gift, pseudo participation and involvement (e.g. empowerment), blame and debt can be localized (e.g. accountability, line
manager, appraisal) and subordinated to the symbolic order of the self (e.g. managerial,
competent, entrepreneurial). But equally, the slave, masquerading as the responsibly autonomous and managing self (e.g. discretion, empowerment, networking), must24 direct, and
lead25 the guilt and hatred inwards, rather than challenging hierarchy, and domination.26 In
this way there is literally, as Gilles Deleuze (2006, chap. VIII) recommended, no imposition
from, or challenge to, those above in the neohierarchy. One may recall the automutilation
and simulacra relation from earlier. As such, self harm is something that is desired in
contemporary neo-primitive organizations of control.27 The self and body are not visibly
chained or incarcerated (e.g. autonomous self); outside forces (e.g. other competitors/rivals)
can be invoked as reasons for change; the post-bureaucratic contract is artificial and
constantly negotiated to allow flexibility and new clauses to be inserted; the whip and other
forms of bondage are virtual, symbolic and discursive;28 the body is contorted, inscribed and
twisted, but the torturer is not directly present or accountable (e.g. depoliticized, action at a
distance). There is also most definitely the desire for, and mingling of pleasure with pain.
As Jo Brewis and Steve Linstead (2000, 146147) announced, collusion is very much a
feature of organizational life where illusions of autonomy prevail. Moreover suspense and
waiting (e.g. anxiety, loss of identity) de-sexualization and re-sexualization (e.g. sexual
differences, thick/thin-skinned), coldness and cruelty (e.g. sacrifice, objectivity) are also
other alternative features of masochism (see Deleuze 2006, 71, 117). Quite evidently as
already discussed, organizational regeneration involves cutting and inscribing the body
according to gender; but also overcoming the putative and pre-supposed limitations, and
sexual differences, of the female body (e.g. thin-skinned).
If we turn to the Madeleine Buntings (2004, 100101) empirical research at Microsoft
UK, we encounter again an instance of a masochistic organization of control. In an apparent
strong (organizational and brand) culture of devotion, identity, autonomy, insecurity,
competitiveness, performance, change, etc., Bunting discovered how people actually
desired becoming addicted and intoxicated through participation in, and belonging to,
Microsoft UK. We encounter again the organized requirement to push the body to its limits
(e.g. high performance). Responsibility and self management entail, through this example,
individual choice and decision making (e.g. stay late), which is compromised by the wider
systemic (see Pelzer 2002, 841) and temporal demands (e.g. worklife imbalance) for high
performance and continual improvement. One again, job insecurity was a discursive and
practical feature of this strong culture. Resonant here is the spectre of excessive competition
for jobs and the hovering threat of being left behind or becoming sacrificed. Whether, for
example, through job loss, the failure to keep learning and remain competent, or wider
destruction of personal circumstances (e.g. debt, family breakdown, homelessness, lower
status employment). Additionally, Microsoft UK remains constantly subject to unrelenting
strategic pressures of competitive IT markets (e.g. wider societies of control).
Distinctively, self harm resurfaces here in connection to what Giorgio Agamben
(1998) and ten Bos (2005) have alluded to, as the state of exception or emergency. In states
of emergency (e.g. organizational change, survival, exception to the rule) the sovereign (e.g.
tyrant, master, Leader, consultant) can decide and rule upon the nature of the exception(s).

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For example, as we witnessed previously, if a strategic business unit is identified as underperforming (e.g. loss-making), it can be removed rendered harmless or lifeles through a
restructuring of the organization. Alternatively, given the existing examples of job
insecurity, failure to meet performance expectations also exposes people to the threshold of
inclusion and exclusion.29 As such, the spectre of dismemberment and sacrifice are becoming inscribed onto the body. Indeed, this is something that people above are desperate to
avoid (identity politics). To experience the potential of exclusion from work is arguably, for
a lot of people, an undesirable option yet immanent possibility. For outside work, we
might encounter and endure the alterity and inscriptions of boredom (e.g. nihilism), radical
alteration (e.g. lifestyle changes), loss of identity (e.g. stigma), and the harmful experience
of becoming useless and harmless. Moreover, the inscribed essence of a body and self that
has failed and lost (become suicided); and is becoming exposed to the horror of our existence (see note 17). Turning to Emmanuel Levinas (1989) again, it may be argued that anxiety, fatigue and tiredness are ethical pre-reflective experiences which expose us to the
anonymity of existence, and the horror, and spectrality, of our limits,30 from which there is
no hiding place or secure refuge. Horror strips the self of the power to have private
existence, or refuse life (ethics). As such, through harm the self is exposed as vulnerable to,
and radically altered by, the experience and necessity of outrage and wounding.
Self harm therefore occurs in various ways, through multiple processes, at the threshold
and reversibility of inside-outside relations. But we also encounter how becoming excluded
from, and not part of work, exposes people to becoming degenerate (e.g. loss of skills,
status, lifestyle) and primitive. This is perhaps akin to becoming suicided by the aforementioned capitalised societies of control. As Antonin Artaud (1959, 5) revealed, the judgements and condemnations of society, which are relayed through social relations, hold the
self to account and blame, where, and
when the general consciousness of society, in order to punish him for having torn himself away
from it, suicided him [this] happens, on the occasion of an orgy, 31 a mass, an absolution or
some other rite of consecration, possession, succubation or incubation. It introduce[s] itself into
his body that absolved consecrated sanctified and protected society For it is the anatomical
logic of modern man to have never been able to live or to have thought of living, except as one
possessed.

Notes
1. Distinctively, Georges Bataille, in The accursed share (1998, Vol. 1, 136138) clarified, servi-

tude (i.e. slavery) is integral to the connection between religion (i.e. Calvinism) and capitalism.
The ontotheological problems concerning the death of God, and the suffering/crucifixion of
Jesus Christ, are constantly becoming denied, and replaced by the capitulation, and subordination, of human life to transcendent otherworldly things (products, production). In turn, as the
paper suggests worship, commitment and devotion are now becoming integral to organizational
life.
2. One might consider here, for example, how the practice(s) of cutting is very firmly connected to
the rise of anatomical science (ten Bos and Kaulingfreks 2002a, 7). And in due course, how the
ontologic and episteme of anatomical science (e.g. objectivity, surgical depth and detail) has been
implicated in organizational practices of cutting (Dale 2001). One might consider, in addition to
the current working examples, how Foucaults notion of dividing practices also is strongly implicated with HRM practices (Townley 1994).
3. Nietzsche provides another understanding of harmless in relation to the stupidity of the master
morality in Beyond good and evil. I will refrain from this tangential line of inquiry for reasons of
world limits.
4. One may consider how the recent economic growth of western societies (US, UK) has required
financial debt to become culturally constructed as necessary and desirable. Arguably, at the time

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5.
6.
7.

8.

9.
10.
11.

12.
13.
14.

15.
16.
17.

18.
19.

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of writing, this appears to be changing (e.g. credit crunch). I connect with this issue again below
(note 31).
One might wish to consult further here, again (see note 1), with the workings of Georges
Batailles The accursed share.
Arguably, this occurs not only through distance, but also through face-to-face relations (proximity). See for example, ten Bos and Kaulingfrekss work (2002a, 2002b) on interfaces/politics of
the ethical face.
One may consider, out of further interest, that the phenomena of catharsis (e.g. purification) have
been linked to tragedy, and sacrifice, in various ways. For example, in the dialectics of Aristotle
(2001), Cassirer (1961) and Holderlin (see Warminski 1987). Catharsis is connected to much
broader concerns such as mimesis, reflection and the mirror stage. Therefore, these remain
beyond the scope of this paper.
As will be explained shortly, the primitive is the essence of alterity. The primitive counter actualizes objectivity, symbolic representations, self centre, truth, and relations between original
and copy, for example. The primitive is that which cannot be organized. The primitive is quite
simply, what Gilles Deleuze (1994, 156) the power of the false.
Please recall the previous link (see note 2) between dividing practices and the management of
human resources.
Please recall earlier the notion of how growing pains of organizing can be justified through a
Hegelian theodicy. Additionally, self development is tied here to overcoming, and refusing,
stupidity, incompetence and impotence.
Following Martin Heidegger (1962, H105113), the ontology of the term in most definitely refers
here to something which refuses life. In denotes geometric deductive and disembodied spatiality.
From Heideggers exegesis, in refers here to the objective truth and ontology of partwhole relationship. In presupposes, for example, that that there can be a division between inside and outside.
As already discussed, for example, in relation to the primitive, and Agambens inclusive exclusion this is highly problematic and dialectic.
As du Gay, Salaman and Rees (1996, 270) highlighted, participation or involvement of employees in activities are offerings.
See note 8 above
I refer here, for example, of the problems of resistance to Taylorism and scientific management,
and the consequent emergence, and response, of human relations movement in the contemporary
episteme of soft capitalism (see, for example, Costea, Crump and Holm 2005). And one might
add also the recent emergence of neo-normative control (Costas and Fleming 2007), where what
is considered to be authentic and intimate is quickly tied to the symbolic and commercial order/
exchange. One might also consider here how primitive practices of self harm, performance art,
and body modification, such as tattooing, have become fashionable and re-inscribed as expressions of western autonomous selfhood (see, for example, Pitts 2003). Given, the genealogical
approach of this paper, I do not accept that Taylorism, alienation, bureaucracy, etc., are redundant
features of post-bureaucratic organizing.
One might consider how the etymology of management relates to grooming (see for example
Burrell 1997; Lennie 1999).
Yet, the aporia of self harm rages again here. As suggested previously (note 14), primitive practices such as tattooing have become fashionable. As such, the primitive becomes domesticated,
re-inscribed, and consequently re-presented as non-primitive, foundational and original.
As Thomas Sheehan (2002, 288) has affirmed, the etymology of necessity, or the Latin ne-cesse
(ne+ cedo), implies not withdrawing or not yielding. Here, necessity is not tied to necessary. Following Emmanuel Levinas (see Bernstein 2002), it may be considered that evil is experienced outside
of, and refuses, thematic calculation and integration. If we follow the workings of Nietzsche,
Artaud, and Deleuze, for example, it becomes apparent how life is cruel. The outside of life is
cruel (see, for example, Deleuze 1997; Dale 2002), because it is indeterminate, and in constant
flux; thus infinitely posing complex challenges, problems, dilemmas, difficulties and demands.
But equally, as Levinas alludes, we experience evil through the flesh as relational, disruptive and
directed at/towards us. This induces us to take flight (redirection) from our self and question the
outside world. Evil cannot be denied, objectified or justified (theodicy). Experiences of pain and
suffering (toil) are not merely our own. As such, this demands an ethical response/challenge.
This is not to suggest that there are not profound disagreements between the two.
Following David Michael Levin (1998), one may appreciate how the skin is already inscribed
with ethical potential. It is through our contacts with the earth, that what Levin calls archi-writing

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20.

21.

22.
23.
24.

25.
26.

27.

28.
29.
30.

L. Gray
becomes apparent/affirmed. It is an instance of flight or becoming drawn to the alterity of circumstances and events. However, despite the multiple inscriptions and brandings that are designed to
categorize people (e.g. race, gender, sex, identity, hierarchy), for example, as already suggested
the effects and affects of trying to superimpose, and brand, powerknowledge relations onto the
body/bodies are never guaranteed. The body for example can express shock and anger (Pitts
2003, 6), through the involuntary capacity to/for affect; thus by producing counter inscriptions or
subversive re-inscriptions.
Imitation is strongly related to Platos dialectics of participation (see Ansell Pearson 2001). One
may also consider how feigning injury and pain (e.g. gamesmanship) may also be performed as
a resistance to organizational goals (e.g. sickness) or to seek an advantage (e.g. manipulation);
but not actually change the order of things (e.g. slavemaster morality). See, for example,
Nietzsches philosophical anthropology during Human all too human.
Following Lawrence J. Hatab (2002, 264) we may gather how a form of ethical relatedness
empathy has its limits. For example, medical staff may seek to respond automatically to the
other. However, experiences of shock and horror (e.g. road accident) may induce problems of
coping, which are non-representational, calculative or chosen. The body may resist ethical behaviour.
See Blanchot (1995, 272278).
We connect again here with note 4. For example, the meeting of individual organizational goals,
targets and objectives, for example, may bring temporary relief through the purging of anxiety
(e.g. catharsis).
Of course, as we saw recently, through the work of Peter Lohmann and Chris Stayaert and in relation to the body, anger, guilt and hatred can be turned to the outside through resistances to formal
organizational change, and through the production of counter inscriptions. As such, the inside
(see note 8) becomes reversed by the outside/exterior.
Implicit here is the absurd carnivalesque spirituality of transformational leadership which is not
associated with the position of CEO, but with self management and self development.
Immanent to this estimation is a Nietzschean ethic concerning slave morality. Nietzsche urged
humanity to literally go beyond or overcome good and evil. The slave experiences suffering, anxiety, abuse, mistreatment, indignity, etc. These features of contemporary post-bureaucratic organizing are indeed instances of the evil of necessity; having to endure (e.g. servitude) that which
does not withdraw. For example, insecurity and pending sacrifice, infinite control and development
of controls (e.g. neo-normative) are seemingly necessary for organizational survival, and progress.
Also, at stake is the necessary perpetuation, and maintenance, of this unfolding order. We discovered earlier the notion of necessary evil. Through Nietzsche (1990), necessary evil is a master
morality, where the good inspire and desire continued states of emergency or exception in order
to remain powerful. The good is therefore separated from the bad or contemptible. As such, the
discourses and practices, such as spirituality, development and autonomy are applied in the name
of achieving goodness (profit, efficiency, productivity) and maintaining/perpetuating the order of
things (states of emergency). As such, slavery is integral to consumption, and post- bureaucratic
neo-primitive organizational cultures of customer centricity. Slavery must be both chosen (self
management, ascesis) and masked (games, simulacra, theodicy).
I connect here with the recent neoDeleuzian workings of Dorothea Olkowski (2007, chap. 5). She
argues, following Gilles Deleuze, that societies of control are underpinned by a masochistic structuring around principles of disavowal, suspense, waiting, fetishism, and fantasy. Pleasure, relaxation and catharsis are tied to enduring harm and self depreciation. Olkowski points to how
customer centric and ICT organization is no less dangerous or harmful than in the past (factory).
There is now an excess of competition for jobs (e.g. IT industry); A demand for human resources
to constantly re-train and learn (e.g. organizational learning); internal competition or economy of
saving oneself are required to achieve organizational objectives (e.g. performance management).
As such, the outside or external forces can be invoked through theodic accounts to simultaneously
attempt to absolve and justify (e.g. master morality) the necessary evil of human organizing. In
the justification of progress, deformation and degeneration occur.
One might consider, for example, the invisible hand of the market or global competitors that will
never be encountered.
We connect again with note 8.
One may here, incorporating Levinass (1989, 33) pursuit of the anthropologist Levy-Bruhl, see
how neo-primitive organizing requires people to become indifferent to impending sacrifice (e.g.
suicide bombers).

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167

31. One might consider how currently, given the global financial problems, we might ask following

Jean Baudrillard (1988, 3) what do we do after the orgy of consumption and debt? For those with
high financial debts (e.g. mortgages, credit cards) who have lived beyond their means, as
consumers the consequences of exclusion from work, and sacrifice, is arguably becoming more
problematic and terrifying.

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