Feeling the Reel of the Real : Framing the Play of Critically Affective Organizational Research Between Art and the Everyday
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This is a repository copy of Feeling the Reel of the Real : Framing the Play of Critically Affective Organizational Research between Art and the Everyday. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/116235/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Linstead, Stephen Andrew orcid.org/0000-0002-1006-2921 (2018) Feeling the Reel of the Real : Framing the Play of Critically Affective Organizational Research between Art and the Everyday. Organization Studies. pp. 319-344. ISSN 1741-3044 https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617717552 Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. 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[email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Organization Studies For Peer Review Feeling the Reel of the Real: Framing the Play of Critically Affective Organizational Research between Art and the Everyday Journal: Organization Studies Manuscript ID OS-15-0846.R2 Manuscript Typ : Sp cial Issu : Organizational Cr ativity, Play and Entr pr n urship organizational a sth tics, organizational thnography, cultural K ywords: p rformanc , critical aff ctivity, p rformanc t sts, arts-.as d m thods This pap r consid rs a num. r of issu s hamp ring th application of arts- .as d 0playful1 m thods in organization studi s onc th clos r lationships . tw n thnography and a sth tic r s arch, and th conn ctions . tw n art and v ryday 2p ri nc , ar r cognis d. Drawing particularly from th cr ativ thnographi s of Kathl n St wart, Dwight Con3u rgood and 4. 5. 6oodall Jr it sugg sts that th p rformativ natur of artistic cultural t 2ts li s in th ir int ntion to mov th ir audi nc towards n w s nsitiviti s, awar n ss, and v n l arning. Criti3u is not oppositional to such d v lopm nt, . ing ss ntial for fully cr ativ mov m nt. Th pap r th r for sugg sts that what is n d d ar critically aff ctiv p rformativ t 2ts. 7or such t 2ts to . socially, politically and A.stract: pist mologically d f nsi.l , and thus a via.l form for r s arch rs to consid r adopting, it is n c ssary to und rstand how th y wor8 to g n rat critical mom ntum, and what possi.l lin s ar availa.l for 9ustifying and valuating cr ativ approach s that chall ng orthodo2 organizational r s arch in . ing n ith r o.9 ctiv , r pr s ntational nor 2pr ssiv . Th pap r outlin s four 0mom nts1 of critical l v rag : a sth tic, po tic, thical and political - that wor8 in play with ach oth r to cr at pow rful artistic t 2ts, and illustrat s th m .y drawing on wor8-r lat d lit ratur , music, po try and art, including wor8plac thnographi s. This fram wor8 na.l s th location or artistic and 0playful1 m thods pist mologically and ontologically r lativ to oth r mod s of r s arch and off rs a ro.ust 9ustification for th ir furth r us in th fi ld of organization studi s. http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/orgstudies Page 1 of 53 Organization Studies 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 For Peer Review 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/orgstudies Organization Studies Page 2 of 53 1 2 3 Feeling the Reel of the Real: Framing the Play of Critically Affective Organizational 4 5 Research Between Art and the Everyday 6 7 8 9 10 11 I have flown to star-stained heights 12 13 On bent and battered wings 14 15 In search of mythical kings, mythical kings, 16 17 Thinking everything of worth 18 19 For Peer Review 20 Was in the sky and not the earth 21 22 And I never learned to make my way 23 24 Down, down, down 25 26 Where the iguanas play 27 28 (Dory Previn, Mythical Kings and Iguanas, 1971) 29 30 31 32 33 While organizational aesthetics can be seen to be established and healthy in real 34 35 organizations (Taylor ( )ansen 200,, p 1227), and recognition of the advantages of using 36 37 artistic form to e-plore everyday organizational issues continues to grow within the field of 38 39 40 organization studies, the irony remains that there are few e-amples of the actual employment 41 42 of artistic forms in the presentation and analysis of .aesthetic/ organizational research The 43 44 separation between the abstracted intellect of Previn/s mythical kings and the earthy 45 46 playfulness of iguanas remains stubbornly persistent, although this is the very space in which 47 48 organization emerges into being Intuition and affect as everyday sources of creativity, when 49 50 51 reported, are presented in accounts that typically suppress their own intuition and affect, and 52 53 indeed, may well be suspicious of e-pressing them As Taylor and )ansen put it0 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/orgstudies Page 3 of 53 Organization Studies 1 2 3 the use of artistic forms to look at aesthetic issues offers a medium that can capture 4 5 and communicate the felt e-perience, the affect, and something of the tacit knowledge 6 7 8 of the day-to-day, moment-to-moment reality of organizations1 2n3ot 4ust the 9 10 cleaned- up, instrumental concerns of 5the business6, but the messy, unordered side as 11 12 well (Taylor ( )ansen 200,, p 1227) 13 14 15 16 8et despite this promise there is only a .small amount of work that uses artistic form to look 17 18 19 at aesthetic issues/For and intellectually Peer enframes, Review analyses and reflects upon what emerges 20 21 (Taylor ( )ansen 200,, p 1227 emphasis added) 22 23 24 25 This paper addresses the important deeper issue of why artistic methods are so 26 27 28 infre9uently used and what can be done about it It does not attempt to correct the lack by 29 30 e-emplifying an alternative approach and deploying an artistic form, because in order to 31 32 prepare the ground for such varied efforts there is a need for more unifying conceptual work 33 34 to be done It is this ground-clearing and tool-cleaning task the paper undertakes It does this 35 36 by enframing, analysing and reflecting on the creative outputs of others : sometimes from 37 38 39 within organization studies, but, because of the endemic and hermetic nature of the problem, 40 41 fre9uently from without Whilst it employs radical ideas, it does not advocate a radical 42 43 replacement of established (5classical6 or 5traditional6) methods by aesthetic methods - we 44 45 need both, and whilst they may positively complement each other they may also generate 46 47 48 fruitful conflict and constructive criti9ue if they are made refle-ively available for processual 49 50 rethinking As Crapanzano (2010, p 7) argues 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/orgstudies Organization Studies Page 4 of 53 1 2 3 I am not opposed to scientific approaches to society, culture, and the psyche, provided 4 5 that (1) they meet appropriate epistemological and methodological standards and (2) 6 7 8 they acknowledge, as best they can, their moral and political implications 9 10 11 12 Of course, it is also necessary for aesthetic approaches to meet these twin standards 13 14 and this paper attempts to identify what landmarks of 5appropriate6 criteria might be 15 16 identified for these types of non-linear, non-representational, often multimodal 5te-t6 The 17 18 19 paper/s critical methodFor is therefore Peer inductive, Reviewin deriving its criteria from e-isting creative 20 21 work as well as critical commentary; but it is also abductive in that it draws and translates 22 23 from a wider sphere of artistic creation than organization studies It takes a middle range or 24 25 5bridge6 position in identifying some basic criteria : the four moments (aesthetic, poetic, 26 27 28 ethical and political) - that can be applied in the soft evaluation of what it terms 5critically 29 30 affective performative te-ts6 The ob4ective here is not to displace established methods, nor 31 32 solely to challenge them0 neither is it merely to enhance them in any superficial manner, 33 34 acknowledging art only as the pursuit of beauty (see for e-ample B4>rkman, 2007) Rather it 35 36 is to enable the full range of what artistic approaches can offer to come into play for 37 38 39 organizational researchers, whether critical, creative or complementary, disturbing or 40 41 affirming, in their encounters with the everyday .mysteries/ of organizing 42 43 44 45 The practical problem that confronts organizational researchers wishing to adopt arts- 46 47 48 based methods and modes is that there appears to be no accepted and robust means of 49 50 evaluating them This renders them intellectually degradable or dismissible as .sub4ective/, or 51 52 politically indefensible as .biased/, and hence institutionally useless as an e-ternal indicator 53 54 of .9uality/ : none of which is good news for building a career in .factories of knowledge/ 55 56 (Goodall 200A; Raunig, 2013) This paper/s ob4ective then is how to identify elements of 57 58 59 60 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/orgstudies Page 5 of 53 Organization Studies 1 2 3 performance te-ts that can be located and used to legitimate, and where necessary evaluate,