Refitting fantasy: psychoanalysis, subjectivity, and talking to the dead

Organizational Rhetoric as Subjectification

“…Thinking of rhetoric as simply the transmission of influence and intent not only “codifies an essential notion of the subject, [but also of] rhetoric itself” (Hanchey, 2018b, p. 270). Organizational rhetoric should instead be “seen as firing off relations and producing texts and subjects in a sticky swirl” (Gunn, 2004, p. 3), and account for factors beyond intent and even symbolicity.…”

“…All subjects are fundamentally dependent upon Otherness for being and becoming. For theorists in the psychoanalytic tradition, this means a dependence upon the Other, that which is fundamentally unknowable and unassimilable and yet formative to subjective being (Davis, 2010; Gunn, 2004). For theorists of racialization and colonialism, this means a dependence upon relation to others, those who are read differently through the intersecting cultural lenses of gender, sexualization, racialization, and coloniality.…”

“…“We” discourse reconstitutes the subjectivity of both workers and managers/organizations. Subjectification processes are not transmission-based, but rather figure a complex field of relations (Gunn, 2004). Managers and even the organization itself are caught up in those relations as much as workers are.…”

“…In Lacanian psychoanalysis, subjects are fundamentally constituted by a misrecognition of the Self as whole, thus foreclosing parts of themselves from conscious knowledge (Gunn, 2004;Lacan, 2006aLacan, , 2006b. No subject can ever be complete, coherent, individuated, or self-knowing (Butler, 2004).…”

“…Subjectification allows for centering difference and Otherness as a conceptual framework in a way that identification, a concept grounded in recognition (Oliver, 2001), cannot. We draw our understanding of subjectivity from theories of psychoanalysis (Costas & Fleming, 2009; Davis, 2010; Gunn, 2004; Hanchey, 2018a), racialization (Carrillo Rowe, 2008; Flores, 2016; Houdek, 2018; Towns, 2018a, 2018b), and decolonization (Hanchey, 2018a; 2018b; Lechuga, 2020; Na’puti, 2019; Wanzer-Serrano, 2015). In part, we do so because these particular theoretical traditions are sorely understudied in organizational communication and have much to offer (Arnaud & Vidaillet, 2018; Cruz & Sodeke, 2020; Harris, 2017).…”