More Than Prefigurative Politics? Redefining institutional frames to reduce precarity under neoliberal capitalism

This paper uses the psychoanalytic concept of the uncanny to develop a new perspective on crisis, one that challenges its association with turning points and opportunities. It highlights the immanence of crisis in organizational life. Crises under consideration include the historic Covid-19 global pandemic, and examples of crisis in public sector organizations shaped by neoliberalism. Engaging with the work of Julia Kristeva, the uncanny is explored as an integral part of our subjectivities, one which disrupts our social stabilities and patterns of organizing. A montage of autoethnographic vignettes is assembled to illustrate the eruption of the uncanny unconscious, a dynamic that unsettles our routine impositions of order and control. Examining crisis through the lens of the uncanny brings to the fore the elusive and affective aspects of socio-political and organizational life. This perspective draws us away from an understanding of crisis as a passing phenomenon or as an opening that can be instrumentalized for cunning managerial purposes. Instead, it suggests the more radical insight that crisis is a condition of organizing.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncanny Organization and the Immanence of Crisis: The public sector, neoliberalism and Covid-19

Orr

2023

“…Organizational scholars increasingly explore alternative initiatives through prefigurative organizing (De Coster & Zanoni, 2023; Schiller-Merkens, 2022). Prefigurative organizing commonly refers to the experimentation with practices that ‘anticipate or enact some feature of an “alternative world” in the present’ (Yates, 2015, p. 4).…”

Section: Prefigurative Organizingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Organizational scholars have increasingly highlighted the role of entrenched inequalities and the struggle of prefigurative organizing. Many studies show how the control, power and domination that these initiatives seek to escape simply reassert themselves in a different form (De Coster & Zanoni, 2023; Reinecke, 2018). These internal struggles in prefigurative organizing are further complicated by their contested relationship with the state and their struggle against the dominant economic institutions (De Coster & Zanoni, 2023; Gomes, 2012).…”

Section: Prefigurative Organizingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, less attention has been given to the autonomous struggles of place-based marginalized communities, such as Maya and Zapatista (Gahman, Penados, & Greenidge, 2020), to enact a desired future in the present (Jeffrey & Dyson, 2016). Building on the emerging research that highlights the struggles inherent in prefigurative organizing (De Coster & Zanoni, 2023; Schiller-Merkens, 2022), we suggest that CCs face various challenges in cultivating alternative practices.…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Prefiguring Alternative Organizing: Confronting marginalization through projective cultural adjustment and tempered autonomy

Bhatt,

Qureshi,

Shukla

et al. 2023

In this paper, we examine community collectives—place-based, community-led initiatives for sustainable livelihood, as an alternative to the top-down, efficiency-driven economic model. Drawing on the theoretical framework of prefigurative organizing, we examined the strategies employed by community members in confronting entrenched inequalities and overcoming marginalization as they envision and engage in inclusive futures. We conducted a comparative case study of two exemplary community collectives in India that exhibited differences in the degree of internal and external marginalization. We identify two key cross-cutting themes of prefigurative organizing: projective cultural adjustment - whether a community leverages their traditional culture or breaks away from it, and tempered autonomy – negotiating autonomy without overtly challenging dominant groups, and exercising self-imposed restraints to make independent decisions. We show how these two themes manifested across three key processes of prefigurative organizing: prefiguring self-governance; commoning; and cultivating discursive spaces. These findings help us theorize that in communities where the degree of internal marginalization is high due to persisting social hierarchies, breaking away from past discriminatory practices, incorporating suspension of consent in the decision-making process, and introducing multiple constructive works are essential components of prefigurative organizing. In communities where the degree of external marginalization is high, building on the past, incorporating refusal in decision-making, and introducing unified constructive work are important components of prefigurative organizing. We suggest that prefigurative organizing against the dominant power structure, whether within community social hierarchies or external exploitative political-economic structures, is based on selective and strategic engagement without seeking an exit, as exit might not be an option for place-based communities. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this research for alternative organizing and grand challenges.

“…Claiming to "refuse to be exploited by European institutional agendas," as Ruangrupa did (Documenta, 2022, p. 12), of course invites scrutiny. For one, the event's comparably lavish funding and its institutional framing were hardly thematized (De Coster & Zanoni, 2022), but taken for granted. And a glimpse at the logos of partners of documenta fifteen itself-wonderfully depicted by Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi in the form of a free-flowing, half-mocking sponsorship mural-as well as the manifold ties of specific initiatives and collectives to non-governmental organizations and various channels of Western state funding made us wonder about entanglements in broader institutional agendas, including the well-connected practice of Ruangrupa itself.…”

Section: Friends and Enemiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Media Review: Contemporary Art as Collective Organizing (and its Contradictions)

Beyes

Holm

2023