Forward

In Winter 2016, I took up a rather interesting challenge. A student walked into my classroom carrying a copy of a rather large book. I took one look at it and guessed that it was an “airport bookshop” style management guru book, feeding cheap advice on what to do in organizations in order to placate anxious managers and students. He saw the look on my face and started to defend the books quality. Beyond making a face and shamefully judging a book by its cover, however, I couldn’t articulate why I was so apprehensive about this book.

Anyone who knows me will be able to predict how I reacted to not knowing what to say about something. I bought the book, read it, and wrote a review of it.What follows is that review, one where I try to play with giving and withholding details in order to comment on this book specifically and this type of book in general. I was also quite jaded at the end of my PhD and so I took the review as an opportunity to take potshots at academic writing. I ended up reworking this review into a paper titled ‘Understanding microfascism: Reading Deleuze and Guattari alongside management guru texts’ which hopefully will be published soon, and while digging on my hard-drive I found the following short piece and decided to post it here rather than letting it gather digital dust in obscurity elsewhere.

[insert book title here]

With the resurgence of authoritarian “strong man leadership” and the cult of personality around leaders themselves in our collective popular culture, it is perhaps no surprise that [insert book title here] is at the top of many “Bestselling Books about Leadership” at the close of 2016. [insert author’s name here] is well known for their image as a successful investor and entrepreneur, with their previous titles like [insert other book title here] trading upon this in order to sell a rhetoric of increasing efficiency and optimizing everyday life. With their newest book [insert author’s name here] broadens their scope, offering lessons from the nearly two hundred “world-class performers” that the author interviewed over the last few years. While critical scholars might argue that such a text has little of value to offer to rigorous, critical, academic analysis, being, at best, no more than a representation of the £6 billion management consultancy industry in the UK, a cheap “guru guide” [insert names of important professors here] to “managing” which tells the audience what they already know in pithy and quasi-inspirational tones and at worst, a blatant cash grab that builds off of the publicity for a highly successful podcast, which features [insert author’s name here], in order to bolster sales. However, following the precedent set by other CMS researchers like [insert reference to work of PhD supervisor here] and [insert reference to work of PhD supervisor’s conference drinking buddy here] this review aims to take the work of [insert author’s name here] seriously and understand it on its own terms, placing it into dialogue with the logic of [insert CMS buzzword here] and [insert half-understood concept from obscure philosopher] in order to suggest that rather than dismissal or readers of [insert journal name here] might find a truly “transformational” understanding of leadership in the writing of [insert author’s name here].

As such, let us begin from the proposition that there is more complexity to [insert book title here] than one would first assume. Though it seems to trade a crude kind of macho, [insert superfluous adjectives] bravado that speaks not only to the image of the leader as a great hero or messiah, but to the deep-seated anxiety and insecurity that underpins much of the popular literature on leadership and leads to the production of texts like this in the first place, [insert commentary cribbed from whoever is popular right now in critical leadership studies here]. There is, to be fair, no shortage of this and the Forward to the text, written by [insert name of popular celebrity here], speaks about how he is not a “self-made man” but rather is one who “stood on the shoulders of giants”. This is the logic by which the book operates, guiding the reader through, over the course of 674 pages, a wealth of stories about the habits of strong leaders who [insert leadership buzzwords here].

Divided into parts with labels like “Healthy”, “Wealthy” and “Wise”,  [insert book title here] seems to flaunt itself before the critical gaze, unconcerned in the face of chastisement because it is lightheaded at the thought of the sheer volume of money that it will make in sales.

Indeed, while [insert book title here] can be read as the climax of a society-wide and Business School cultivated masturbatory obsession around the strong leader (the book contains some 101 “profile chapters”, each focusing on a different “transformational leader”, one whose characteristics, qualities and successes are extolled as the [insert pithy catchphrase from book’s blurb here]) this is inadequate to the sheer magnitude of the project of  [insert book title here]. The star studded list of giants whose shoulders the reader might stand on include Olympic gymnastics coaches, Professors and PhD’s in everything from Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology to Neuroscience, doctors who were once endurance athletes, CrossFit trainers, professional wrestlers, high profile investors off of the cover of Forbes magazine, politicians, developers and founders of some of the mainstay websites of the contemporary internet, Oscar nominated film-makers, billionaires, hedge fund managers, professional snowboarders, CEO’s, master chefs, Navy SEALs, Grammy nominated musicians and popular actors; all of whom have a small space in [insert book title here] to share their wisdom and insights on life and being successful at living. However, the constant emphasis on adopting the life habits of “great men” [insert feminist critique here] and various health and wellness routines evokes the image of the transformation of a man  into some manner of drug-enhanced, low-bodyfat, business-savvy guru who speaks only in maxims about “success” and “motivation” rather than any of the above. A Gregor Samsa for the modern age. [insert witticism based on Kafka’s original German here].

However, despite what nightmarish imagery can be conjured about its content, what is perhaps noteworthy about [insert book title here] is its boldfaced simplicity. It wants to be nothing other than an instruction manual for how to be a great leader. There are no footnotes, no references to previous work done in the field, no “obligatory references”, no “positioning of the work”, no “theory” bandied about and yet, even if one might critique the rigour of the “200 interviews” that form the books basis, [insert book title here] is a qualitative study underpinned by a philosophical project of holistic wellness, mastery and development of the kind more common to ancient Greece than contemporary academia. All of this, one might contend, is in the writing, or, more apropos, in the ineffable ways in the writing constructs its reader –  an eager young millennial struggling for a sense of purpose or direction, likely to be enchanted by stories of “great men” who were successful through a series of habits or qualities that you too can cultivate. Such a reader might peruse this book and be expected to learn everything from where to meet high profile people, how to exercise more effectively, what books to read, habits to adopt to deal with ennui.  [insert book title here] is thus, in its coverage of topics as diverse as investment strategy in relation to [insert new business trend here] to why MBA programs are a 2-year vacation that look good on one’s CV, from work-out tips from people who’ve climbed Mount Everest to many other instances of what philosopher Daniel Dennett termed “deepity” (“The basics are the basics, and you can’t beat the basics” or “Life is a continual process of arrival into who we are”), a startling caricature of the life of its target audience, insofar as it seems to suggest a group so fatigued by the trials, tribulations and anxieties of modern life that they need advice with [insert list that will shock a CMS reader, like the mattress buying checklist or the constant array of “healthy living” tips, here]. One could almost be duped into believing that one were reading a “modernization” of classic philosophical aphorisms, like those of Nietzsche or Seneca for [insert book title here] has as much life affirming and positive insight in its “deepity” to help one cope with modern life as any of the dusty volumes that organizational scholars dredge from the library in order to make themselves “sound smarter than everyone else” [insert reference to anyone within CMS who has moaned about “academic writing” here]. Indeed, [insert author’s name here] shares this concern and [insert reference to story about author’s rejection of MBA programs based upon his dislike for academics who use too many big words and PowerPoint slides here] seems to suggest that one might find a more thorough and grounded education outside of the academic university. Though recent scholarship within CMS [insert a number of references to publications by members of the jorunal’s editorial board in order to mask a prayer to Dvalin, the Norse rune-god, asking both that this review be published and that the entire edifice of “academic writing” which supports a sentence like this one could burn ingloriously to the ground, here] has done much to address concerns around writing and pedagogy, what we might see in [insert book title here] is an unparalleled knowledge of audience. Such a tailored approach enables it to speak directly and prescriptively about how they may “transform”.

Like so many of these train station bookshop “leadership guides” [insert book title here] will like fade fast, into the discount bin; its status as a transformative bible for a 21-year old, final year Bsc Management student from a small British town with dreams of becoming a successful entrepreneur dwindling into the aether of memory as the book that he spent two weeks swearing to live his life by gathers dust on a shelf or is used to elevate a computer monitor. However, one wonders whether the critical scholars who number amongst [insert journal name here] audience might find the text as transient, or whether they might find something of value in the way that [insert author’s name here] writes, in the way that he draws in and captures the same audience that we would want to in order to ensure the future of our discipline. These are no doubt our students and it is worth speaking to them.

In the least, the readers of [insert journal name here] might find a reference point for critique in [insert book title here]. All too often CMS caricatures “the mainstream”, to the degree where this reviewer wonders if the readers of [insert journal name here] can remember the last time that they read a book that was on a list of “Best Sellers in Business”…

It’s conference abstract season again and while I’ve already submitted something on microfascism and management gurus to the Deleuze Studies Conference in Brazil, I find myself struggling with a submission for EGOS. The short paper form of EGOS has always irked me. While I understand how useful it can be to get meaningful feedback on a piece of work, I’ve always found it a miserable struggle to cut down a long paper to below 3000 words. It has never been clear to me whether the same norms of academic writing apply (i.e., “strategic” or “political” referencing to demonstrate command of a body of literature; meticulously differentiated and carefully couched contributions etc.) or whether I’m supposed to be communicating just the gist of the paper without the “bells and whistles”.

This is, of course, not the first time that I’ve submitted something to EGOS. While working on my PhD in 2015, I took the time to write up a short submission on the theme of  “Lines” and their relationship to organizational ethnography for a stream on the “power of organizational ethnography“. In reflecting upon this work, I could have done much more  to develop the notion of “linear thinking” that I struggled to articulate in the paper’s short space. Much of the thinking of this short paper would go on to form a chapter in my thesis that no one but me (not even my supervisors or external examiner) seemed to like.

The paper ended up being rejected with the following comments:

Unfortunately the ideas in this paper might need some further development. It does not become clear from the short paper how Deleuze and the ‘power of lines’ contribute to our thinking about the role of the ethnographer and the reflexive challenges that are faced in the field. This is not to say that there might be a good paper here but we had to make some hard choices on accepting papers.

Reflecting this paper, I think that this was a very charitable set of comments by stream conveners Juliette Koning and Jana Costas, but ones that I think were also reflective of the space from which I was writing at the time. The struggle was one that still troubles my writing, namely the figure of the reader. What can you assume that they know, understand, are already aware of etc. Obviously this is something that Patricia Dunker has made me reflect on further, but it also represents a pedagogical problem, namely how one is to teach/explain something. I’m posting the 2015 short paper below in full (warts and all) so that I might continue to reflect on this.

The Power of Lines: Deleuze and The Shopping Centre
Short Paper for the 32nd EGOS Colloquium: July 7–9, 2016. Naples, Italy.
With the recent publication of the second of two monographs by Tim Ingold (2007, 2015) on the nature and character of lines, the question of the line has once again risen to the forefront of contemporary anthropological thinking. Within anthropology and among practicing ethnographers the line has also become a source of interest and concern in the last decade- whether evidenced in Glowczewski’s (2005) observation of the crisscrossing storylines among hyperlinks which ethically tell the stories of the Warlpiri, or Gershon’s (2008) concern for lines of power among the multiple layers of complexity in the classroom, or Tierney’s (2008) exploration of the demarcation of the border between ethnography and fiction in Hauro’s “Demon Bird’- thinking on the line seems to be everywhere. As Ingold (2010) himself notes, this attention to lines follows in the tradition of artists like Paul Klee, who in taking lines for walks around the canvass, becomes a key example for the philosopher Gilles Deleuze in his writing on lines. Within Organizational Studies some have already begun to draw inspiration from this trend (see Holt and Mueller, 2010) but for those of us who wish to explore similar lines of thought through ethnographic work, there are still many avenues that might be pursued. This short essay, itself a product of our fieldwork at the shopping centre over the course of the last few years, will consider only one of these, namely reading through Deleuze’s work, the lines which constitute the shopping centre in time and through the subject, examining the ways that these manifest, develop, proliferate through and intersect with the shopping centre. We contend that despite Ingold’s prodigious efforts, the power of lines remains unrealized, for what lines offer is a way to problematize the role of the ethnographer and rethink the reflexive challenges that are faced in the field.

Deleuze says “whether we are individuals or groups, we are made up of lines” (Deleuze and Parnet, 2007. p.124) echoing a sentiment expressed in A Thousand Plateaus as “we are made of lines. We are not only referring to lines of writing. Lines of writing conjugate with other lines, life lines, lines of luck or misfortune, lines productive of the variation of the line of writing itself, lines that are between the lines of writing.”(Deleuze and Guattari, 2005. p.194) The line here replaces the point as the focus of analysis or, put another way, the connections between ideas, thoughts, moments or regimes of coding becomes, in Deleuze’s analysis, more important than the identification and categorization of the things themselves. Thinking in these terms, we might see the shopping centre as constituted entirely by lines. Parallel lines mark the escalator, flowing uphill into the shopping centre and downhill into the network of roads which connect its spaces to nearby towns and cities. Lines created by tiles form seemingly infinite grid, breaking only to betray areas of wear and tear, repair and heavy traffic; signs of heavy scuff marks, scrapes, prams dragging, cleaning carts grating. These lines extending from the floor, travel up the walls and intersect with ostentatious patterning which in turn weaves its way around signs adorned with various other lines of text. Diagonal white lines on a black dress adorn a mannequin in the window display of a trendy store because that particular pattern- endorsed by fashion gurus, mass-produced and worn by characters on television programs- is back in style this summer. Lines buzz in the mind from books read on the bus while travelling to the shopping centre, intermingled with the lines of multi-lingual (a trained ear might detect variants of Hindi, French and Japanese) conversations with which the bus route resonated. Lines from television, film and radio filter their way into conversation as opinions and ideas are repeated untraceably. Messes of lines pile high and offer value to the discerning Italian restaurant-goer who visits the food court. Policed and surveilled lines surround the shopping centre, creating a bordered and sovereign territory within which there are specific laws and codes of conduct; rules that often do not apply in the world outside. Lines themselves are, at times, the enemy, an indicator that further resources must be allocated in order to deal with the customers who have formed the line, lest a glut form or there be something which negatively affects the shopper’s perception of the space. However, lines themselves can be desired, like the sleek lines of a car sold in a temporary pop-up-store which are both often the subject of conversation. It seems that lines have the power to function as everything from an aesthetic choice to a vector, demonstrating variously despotic power, as it marshals men and women to attend to it, and a passive permeation, as they floats around the collective consciousness.

Our captivation with the lines of the shopping centre is entangled with Ingold’s own interest in, for example, the lines made by slugs (Ingold, 2012) or those implicated in the history of writing and inscription (Ingold, 2007). This fascination with lines is also found throughout Deleuze’s work. For instance, in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze (2001) often mentions lines in relation to time. His intention for much of this work, is to give a genetic account for not just thought and the conditions of thinking but thought of the subject. Paraphrasing Voss (2013), one of Deleuze propositions is simply that “thought” forms the “I” rather than the “I” “thought”. While a long-form discussion of Deleuze’s understanding of “the subject” (the “I” in this context) is beyond the scope of this paper, it is sufficient to say that Deleuze owes a great debt to Kant in this regard and that, for Deleuze, Kant’s work presents a subject profoundly fractured by the “line of time”. To use James William’s translation of Difference and Repetition “It is as if the ‘I’ is traversed by a fault line: it is fractured by the pure and empty form of time.” (Williams, 2011. p.82). This fracturing of the subject by what is referred to as the third synthesis of time is explained in many ways across the secondary literature, from discussions of inheritance in Hamlet, to the Nietzschean eternal return (see, for example: Voss, 2013) in each case emphasising the way that the subject is divided between the unity of the “I think” (the assumption of the naturality of which is a key concern for the project of Difference and Repetition) and the empirical experiences of the self. We shall return to this point, for what concerns us here is less this series of lines of thought and time which revolve around the exegesis of the Deleuze/Kant relationship and more what Joe Hughes says with regards to the chapter of Difference and Repetition wherein Deleuze develops this theory of time:

“This chapter in particular manages to bring together thinkers as diverse as Hume, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Bergson James, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Lacan and Ricoeur – and there are probably more […] Of course it would be impossible to untangle all of these lines, not to mention counter-productive” (Hughes, 2009. p.87-88).

Indeed, Deleuze writes with a rich plethora of references and draws from a wide variety of sources, some of them acknowledged while others remain uncited. Another way to think about this is to say that the work which we call Deleuze’s is an intersection of various untraceable lines, all of ambiguous origin which will have always produced the text, given the soico-cultural, economic, historical and intellectual climate of Europe at the time of inscription. This authorial ambiguity is a source of great pride for Deleuze and his co-authors, as can be seen in the famed introductory paragraphs of A Thousand Plateaus where the question of “who wrote what” parts of the text, which is itself to be viewed as a tangle of different living lines of thought, is treated with disdain; as though it could not have been written other than written by a many at once.

The question of “Who writes thus?” is germane to ethnographic thinking and has, as such, already been considered in different ways. Though the Writing Culture project, and its current iterations in the trends of cosmological perspectivism (de la Cadena, 2015; Viveiros de Castro, 2012) or attention to the thoughts and dreams of a forest (see Kohn, 2013) or the topology of a road and other manifestations of the discourse of material ontology more broadly (see Harvey, 2012 or Harvey et al., 2013) or to the various intersections with the postmodern (Spiro, 1996; Spencer, 2001), has accomplished much in the way of achieving similar reflexive and self-aware writing, it has never gone as far as one might in reading Deleuze’s antagonism towards the subject. The auto- ethnographic turn to examine the self as it conducts ethnography (Davies, 1999; Foley, 2002) is here also insufficient, for it is attentive primarily to that relation between the assumed object of study, “outside” and that which is revealed through reflexive practice “inside”. It is perhaps yet to be considered that the lines of thinking and time intersect the subject in ways, rendering nonsensical the distinction between inside and outside or indeed the notion of the subject as origin. To adapt Wilfred Bion (1989) thoughts might live in the shopping centre, produced by no one individual but simply awaiting a thinker. Even in a cursory reading, the challenge of Deleuze’s reading of the subject as a residuum (Deleuze and Guattari, 2000), as nothing more than a by-product of the habitual synthesis of time (Deleuze, 1991) or as fractured by time (Deleuze, 2005), is to push our understanding of the interrelation of ethnographer and field further. This is perhaps what it means to answer the call to “take Deleuze into the field” (Bonta, 2005); thinking through philosophy while doing fieldwork rather than viewing “theory” as an ex post facto addendum to the completed ethnographic project. It is to ask “What does it mean to think without the ‘I’?” acknowledging that under the scrutiny of such a reflexive gaze, the subject disappears entirely, unable to function as a font of knowledge, wisdom or interpretation, what space and time occupies the subject becomes a reflector of the field and all of its madnesses. To put it differently, the study of the field becomes one about attending to lines, some of which may seem far off or remote.

Within Organization Studies, such ideas will no doubt seem paradoxical, for we have taken to, either as or in lieu of reflexivity, glorifying the identity of the researcher as subject (see, for example, Alvesson’s (2010) “Seven-S” model of “self-identity in organization studies”). While such a comment may seem facetious, given the developments to the concept of “reflexivity” that have followed from authors like Chia (1996) or Linstead (1994) it worth reflecting upon the fact that it is still a popular opinion within Organization Studies that ethnography has the potential to unveil the “realities of how things work” in an organization as researchers seek to “get into the heads” of those who live and work there (Watson, 2011. p.1); as though reality were a thing “out there” which the brave ethnographer could uncover being by implication, able to understand it; able to interpret the fundamentally chaotic nature of the universe by distilling said chaos through the “I”, to organize it and make it manageable (and no organization is more immediate to our thinking than the “I”). Where the “I” becomes part of the process, as is the case for those influenced by the discourses around actor-network-theory (see Hardy et al., 2001), it is as a part of a laudable interest in process and the construction of research subjects, however, we are still, debatably, unable to follow the lines.

Let us illustrate this with an example. While sitting in the shopping centre on a bench and waiting for an interlocutor to arrive for an “interview” one might read in a book by Deleuze and Guattari (2005) about different types of lines. They speak of the line of molar or rigid segmentarity (a line of ossified binary systems), the line of molecular or supple segmentation (a line of deterritorialization) and the line of flight (a line of rupture that disrupts the other two lines). After thinking about these three types of line for a while, contemplating how the rigid line, can be thought in terms of sites of discipline (Deleuze, 1992) such as the school, the family, the shopping centre while the supple line might be considered in terms of the small modifications, connections or resistances that one might make against such discipline by appropriating for example, the spaces of the shopping centre for exercise or dancing as are done by various small communities. Contemplating the third type of line however, leaves one perplexed for, in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, a single line of flight might overthrow a regime, change a state of affairs and upset the order of the world for along that line is that which slips by uncoded and uncontrolled. How it could this be understood and meaningfully developed in the context of the shopping centre? Dwelling on this one might write down in a field journal only this note “There is nothing more subversive than a line”, to be puzzled over at a later date.

When one’s interlocutor arrives, the two of you slip into easy, familiar and casual conversation as this is not your first meeting. Even if the conversation was recorded, it would have been impossible to trace where or when the discussion turned to lines. Perhaps it happened while wandering past the Apple store and seeing a long line of shoppers queued up for the latest Apple gadget. Perhaps it was seeing a sign advertising a new line of lingerie. Perhaps it happened when you inadvertently revealed that you were reading about lines. Regardless of how it happened, the conversation has shifted and the discussion is now of the various lines that one might say in the shopping centre. “Thank you, come again!”, “You alright there, mate?”, “Have a nice day!” considering how these are scripted and inscribed into the employee through customer service training. As a mystery shopper, the interlocutor’s job is to evaluate how well the employee delivers these and other lines and report on how well they perform their roles. As the conversation evolves one learns much about the lines which both parties say and follow.

Can it be said that this conversation was “authored”? To do so, one would have to neglect the insight of offered by the likes of Foucault and Barthes about the death of the author. To adapt Barthes, conversation, as text does not have secret meanings instilled by an author but rather, is “a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash” (Barthes, 1977. p.146). Despite our reflexivity, however, we would not ask who wrote these lines (The interlocutor, the ethnographer, both of them together, or perhaps the shopping centre itself- Could its lines dream themselves into the discussion, the space colluding to produce a discussion of lines) because to do so would threaten the validity of the “data gathering” that is taking place. The lines of thought seem too many and too entangled. Is Hughes (2009) thus right and is the complex inter-tanglement of the different relations of author(ity) counterproductive to attempt to parse- the text of a spoken conversation being as analytically rich as any work of philosophy- because any causal links or points of origin and genesis are the product of either the imagination or a set of relations so interlinked and inextricably intertwined that their complexity and nuance are ineffable? Did the shopping centre cause this attention to lines (rather than say, points) or were lines caused elsewhere and then imposed onto the shopping centre by a pretentious, navel-gazing academic who wanted to speak about Deleuze and lines? To ask this is to reveal ourselves to be looking for the author again, for an ethnographer as an autonomous- thinking subject- at the core of it all.

For another example, we might return to Ingold’s (2010) discussion of the interconnectedness of a tree, that is, an inability to draw lines around its boundaries and determine where the tree begins and ends, citing the problems posed by algae, squirrels and other things which don’t seem to fit traditionally in the definition of “tree”. Though Ingold himself does not make this point, when read through Deleuze, the examples of the tree or other instances of what he calls the “meshwork” (Ingold, 2015), one can think the human subject under exactly the same terms; as impossible to border with fixed lines.

Thus the question which we return to again, is that of the subject. We have puzzled over it and its assumed identity for millennia but perhaps have yet to develop an answer to the question of “How might one live?” (May, 2005) or, more relevantly, how one might research without returning to a subject. Therein lies the power of lines: a way out of the trap of the subject and the redux to the I think. By making the lines the centre of our analysis we might ask not “What is?” but the question which Deleuze and Guattari (2005. p.214) ask: “Whatever could have happened for things to have come to this?” for this is the question of ethnographic lines; not the rigid lines of a discipline nor the supple lines of individual experiments within ethnographic practice but lines of flight, radical ruptures with the organization of the “I”. Thinking thus is to begin trying to reject researching as an “I” who is thinking about those who are thought but, as Deleuze himself writes in a volume titled Who Comes after the Subject?, to think in terms of “pre-individual singularities and non-personal individuations” (Cadava et al., 1991. p.95). To put this another way, rather than being serf to the “grammatical fiction” of the I, one might- whether through experiments in writing via the “fourth person singular” or through cultivating an attention to lines- attempt to think differently.

Here we find that there is truly nothing more subversive than a line, for though we are all of us changed by our fields, we hold ourselves, nevertheless bound by the rigid li(n)es of the subject. However, inasmuch as the rigid lines of the subject constrain and subvert the creativity of our thoughts, making us always ask “Who said that?” or “What happened?” as we look for an author or origin, an attention to lines can also be what subverts this image and, in rupture, allows us to see the field differently and thus understand our mode of relating to it in ways other than those of separateness, author(ity) and identity. This is the power of lines; to follow a philosophical line of thought and see the linear thinking of the subject finally decline.

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