Deconstructive Psychographies: ethical discourse and the institution of the university

Building on existing considerations of reflexivity in research writing, this essai seeks to reappraise the concept of responsibility in relation to the ethics of post-representational research methodology in organization studies. Jacques Derrida's discussions of responsibility and undecidability and Emmanuel Lévinas' distinction between the saying and the said are brought to bear on the ethics of the discursive construction of organizational research as a form of representing the Other. The essai argues that responding to reflexivity extends beyond textual practice and self-accounting towards a responsibility for the exercise of academic freedom. This freedom entails a radical openness that is operationalized in an ongoing reinvention that resists the institutionalization of the field of inquiry through a form of transformative knowledge. It is the legacy and promise of reflexivity in organization studies that can invigorate the imagination in research -its poiesis -as an ongoing project of saying the ethical.

show abstract

“…The implications of this for research practice are more radical than the forms of self-accounting outlined above. As Trifonas (1999) suggests:…”

Section: The Self Of Reflexivitymentioning

confidence: 93%

“…The implications of this for research practice are more radical than the forms of self-accounting outlined above. As Trifonas (1999) suggests: meaning as being knowledge once and for all. Knowledge, thus temporalized, is the always something to-come (Derrida 1995), always an attestation to the saying (Lévinas 1991).…”

Section: The Self Of Reflexivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

After Reflexivity: Ethics, Freedom and the Writing of Organization Studies

Rhodes

2009

Organization Studies

121

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The implications for researcher identity are especially important. As Trifonas (1999) explains, exposing our own knowledge to a questioning from the other is tantamount to questioning the authority and autonomy of our knowledge and of ourselves; it invokes opening up the self to a difference that one cannot simply incorporate into one’s own schemes, models or theories. This is not simply a matter of adopting a new rationality in research situations, as much as it involves a new affective sensibility.…”

Section: Ethical Vulnerability and The Teaching Of The Othermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is less about establishing researcher identity, and more about usurping it and transgressing its assumed privilege. This, in turn, positions the activity of research as being centrally concerned with exposing one’s own ‘discourse to the questioning of the Other’ (Trifonas, 1999: 185).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The teaching of the other: Ethical vulnerability and generous reciprocity in the research process

Rhodes

Carlsen

2018

Human Relations

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How is it that researchers can engage with those they research ethically? In response to the challenge of this question, we articulate an ethics of research engagement based on vulnerability and generosity. This is explored with a special focus on the practicalities of organization studies research. Building on developments in reflexive methodology, we draw on Emmanuel Levinas’ relational ethics to consider how research can be approached as receiving a ‘teaching of the other’. Such teaching involves a radical openness to other people’s difference such that knowledge arises from being affected by those others rather than claiming to know them in any categorical sense. The possibility that emerges is that of a reflexively ethical position from which to conduct research premised on letting go of the egotistical comforts of one’s own epistemic authority. Self-reflexivity becomes rendered subservient to other-vulnerability in embodied research encounters that are open and generous. The promise for research is a deepening of our corporeal, affective and aesthetic engagement with others and an enlarged sense of the ethical meaning of research.

show abstract

“…The principle of reason ‘as principle of grounding, foundation or institution’ (Derrida, 1983) has tended to guide the science of research toward techno‐practical ends (see Derrida, 1983). From this epistemic superintendence of the terms of knowledge and inquiry, there has arisen the traditional notion of academic responsibility that is tied to the pursuit of truth via a conception of science based on the teleological orientation of intellectual labour toward the production of tangible outcomes achieved according to a method of procedural objectivity (Trifonas, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2001).…”

Section: Knowledge and Interests: The Reason And Responsibility Of Rementioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethics of Science and/as Research: Deconstruction and the orientations of a new academic responsibility

Trifonas

2003

Educational Philosophy and Theory

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Deconstructive Psychographies: ethical discourse and the institution of the university

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

After Reflexivity: Ethics, Freedom and the Writing of Organization Studies

After Reflexivity: Ethics, Freedom and the Writing of Organization Studies

The teaching of the other: Ethical vulnerability and generous reciprocity in the research process

The Ethics of Science and/as Research: Deconstruction and the orientations of a new academic responsibility

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About