Organization Theory Naveen Bharathi

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Critical theory and Post modernism: New ways of seeing the World
If one has to name two intellectuals and philosophers who changed how the
world thought and gave new perspectives to see things society, culture and
knowledge it is Karl Marx and Michel Foucault. The perspectives provided by them
gave us radical methodologies to analyze and understand society.
Marxs ideas of how the society worked and progressed still continue to influence
a lot of intellectuals from various disciplines philosophy, sociology, history and
economics. Marx was much more than a Communist theorist and a critique of
modernism. His theories of dialectical materialism and alienation could explain most of
the social structures of modernism. Whatever the results of Marxist theories may have
proven to be historically, they are nevertheless even to this day the most devastating
critique of existing ideas about things and states of affairs. He saw history as a class
struggle eventually resulting in a socialist proletariat revolution. Critical theory
attempted to explain why this proletariat revolution prophesied by him did not occur as
expected. Critical theorists, mostly Marxists initially try to combine the theories/
methods of Marx with other philosophical discourses for their analysis of the society and
human condition as a whole. While on this path, many thinkers of the so called Critical
school like Jurgen Habermas have departed from the Marxist perspectives of the
founders and have built a very different epistemological method to analyze and
understand the internal dynamics of the society.
The origin of critical theory can be traced to the Institute for Social Research in
1937 to describe their different approach to the dialectical Hegelian Marxism which
aimed at a more inter disciplinary approach to play a progressive role in social theory by
developing concepts that are subversive of the prevailing ideologies and can provide
weapons of critique in the struggle for a better society.
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Many critical theorists like
Herbert Marcuse were not averse to emancipatory elements in the bourgeois tradition,
while criticizing its tendencies of repression and domination. Critical theory argues that
specific phenomena can only be comprehended as parts of a whole; hence a crucial task
of social theory is to describe the structures and dynamics of the social system.

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TOWARDS A CRITICAL THEORY OF SOCIETY Introduction, Pg 10
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Following the tenets of the Marxian theory, Marcuse stressed the importance of
recognition that social and human existences are constituted by the totality of the
relations of production.
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But thinkers like Habermas have departed from this Marxian
perspective to analyze social norms. To quote him
For Marx, the phenomenological exposition of consciousness in its
manifestations, which served Hegel only as an introduction to scientific knowledge,
becomes the frame of reference in which the analysis of the history of the species stays
confined. Marx did not adopt an epistemological perspective in developing his
conception of the history of the species as something that has to be comprehended
materialistically. Nevertheless, if social practice does not only accumulate the
successes of instrumental action but also, through class antagonism, produces and
reflects on objective illusion, then, as part of this process, the analysis of history is
possible only in a phenomenologically mediated mode of thought. The science of man
itself is critique and must remain so. For after arriving at the concept of synthesis
through a reconstruction of the course of consciousness in its manifestations, there is
only one condition under which critical consciousness could adopt a perspective that
allowed disengaging social theory from the -epistemological mediation of
phenomenological self-reflection: that is if critical consciousness could apprehend and
understand itself as absolute synthesis. As it is, however, social theory remains
embedded in the framework of phenomenology, while the latter, under materialist
presuppositions, assumes the form of the critique of ideology.
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In the above text, we can see Habermas is trying to critique Marx and defend him at the
same time. According to him, as we can see in the excerpt, Marx overreacted to his
philosophical guru Hegels dialectics.




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Ibid, Pg 12
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KNOWLEDGE & HUMAN INTEREST, 1968. Chapter Three: The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory
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Postmodernism Lost in translation?
Doubtless there was a certain universality of writing which stretched across to
the elite elements of Europe living the same privileged life-style, but this much-prized
communicability of the French language has been anything but horizontal; it has
never been vertical, never reached the depths of masses.
-Roland Barthes, Oeuvres Completes Vol. I (1942-65)
A great deal of post-modernist theory depends on the maintenance of skeptical
attitude: and here the philosopher Jean- Fancois Lyotards contribution is essential. He
argued in his La condition postmoderne that we now live in an era in which legitimizing
master narratives are in crisis and in decline. These narratives are contained in or
implied by major philosophies, such as Kantianism, Hegelianism and Marxism, which
argue that history is progressive, that knowledge can liberate us, and that all knowledge
has a secret unity. The two main narratives Lyotard is attacking are those of progressive
emancipation of humanity from Christian redemption to Marxist utopia and that
triumph of science. Lyotard considers that such doctrines have lost credibility since the
Second World War: Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity
towards metanarratives.
These metanarratives traditionally serve to give cultural practices some form of
legitimation or authority. One example could be the Constitution of any country for
example India- its enactment based on democratic principles and the sovereign
authority of the state. For any solution plaguing the Indian society, we look for solution
in the Constitution. Many Supreme Court judgments go back to interpret and
reinterpret every word in the constitution to define the rights of a citizen. These
metanarratives are built over years.
So what is wrong with these meta-narratives? These metanarratives - be it
nationalism, patriotism, state, constitution, development, democracy and even
secularism etc. have in fact responsible for so much repression, violence, war
everywhere. Modern project or enlightenment was essentially about building such grand
metanarratives. The basic attitude of postmodernists was skepticism about the claims of
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these metanarratives to offer a kind of overall, totalizing explanation. They felt that an
intellectuals task was to resist these metanarratives, and any kind of consensus or
collusion was suspect. Postmodernists responded to metanarratives by siding with those
who didnt fit into the larger stories the subordinated and the marginalized. This
heralded a pluralist age, in which, as we can see, even the arguments of scientists and
historians are to seen as no more than quasi-narratives which compete with all the
others for acceptance in other words critiquing the enlightenment. They are just like
any other theory.
Much significant postmodernist writing has therefore turned on articulating this
kind of skepticism- for example- Edward Said in his orientalism attempted to show the
distorting effects of the projection of the western grand narrative of imperialism upon
oriental societies. One of the foremost anti- modern (if not postmodern) Indian thinkers
of our times has been Ashis Nandy. According to him, Modern colonialism won its great
victories not so much through its military and technological prowess as through its
ability to create secular hierarchies incompatible with the traditional order.
Metanarratives see the world in black and white. To quote Ashis Nandy,
As this century with its bloodstained record draws to a close, the nineteenth century
dream of one world has re-emerged, this time as a nightmare. It haunts us with the prospect of
a fully homogenized, technologically controlled, absolutely hierarchized world, defined by
polarities like the modern and the primitive, the secular and the non-secular, the scientific and
the unscientific, the expert and the layman, the normal and the abnormal, the developed and
the underdeveloped, the vanguard and the led, the liberated and the savable.
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The western grand narratives saw themselves to be rational, ordered, peaceful
and defined the Orient as the opposite of this just like EM Forsters saw India in his A
Passage to India and always had the confidence that that is representation of them
would prevail. The grand imperial story of progressive development was superimposed
on a merely local and deviant Oriental practice.


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THE INTIMATE ENEMY-Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, Pg 10
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Deconstruction Playing with the text
The central argument for deconstruction depends on relativism, which essentially views
that truth itself is always relative to the differing standpoints and predisposing
intellectual frameworks of the judging object. Hence a deconstructor doesnt have a
definite philosophical thesis. Indeed, to attempt to define deconstruction is to defy
another of its main principles which is to deny that final or true definitions are
possible, because even the most plausible candidates will always invite a further
defining move, or play with the language. For the deconstructor, the relationship of
language to reality is not given, or even reliable, since all language systems are
inherently unreliable cultural constructs.
As Barthes put it:
We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single theological meaning
(the message of the Author God) but a multidimensional space in which a variety of
writings, none of them original, blend and clash Literature by refusing to assign a secret,
an ultimate meaning, to the text, (and to the world as text) liberates what may be called an
anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is
in the end to refuse God and his hypostasis reason, science, law.
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Homi Bhabhas Post-colonialism
The theoretical recognition of the split-space of enunciation may open the way to
conceptualising an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the
diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture's hybridity. It is the
inbetween space that carries the burden of the meaning of culture, and by exploring this Third
Space, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of ourselves.
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture
Congruent with postmodern understanding of power/knowledge and in keeping
with other streams in postcolonial studies (especially that associated with Edward Said),
Bhabha seeks to understand the formation of colonial knowledge as emerging out of the
asymmetric and power-laden encounter between the colonizers and colonized, and as

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IMAGE- MUSIC- TEXT 1977 The Death of the Author.
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serving to naturalize and legitimize the colonizers domination (Bhabha, 1994a).
However, diverging from the Saidian tradition, Bhabha does not limit his analysis to the
accumulation of Western knowledge about the Other but, rather, seeks to analyze the
implementation of ostensibly universal Western knowledge in the colonies. Bhabha
refers to the colonial discourse surrounding the transfer of the metropoles knowledge
into the colonies as the discourse of mimicry. (Frenkel, 2008)
Discussion Papers in the light of the above theories:
Calas and Smircich (1999) examine the impact of postmodernism and
poststructuralism on organization studies. Their explanation of the genealogical analysis
and deconstruction with examples using this approach helps familiarize these theories
to scholars in organizational studies. To cite one such example,
For instance, one may ask, "What do a prison observation tower and total quality
management (TQM) practices have to do with one another?" (e.g., Sewell & Wilkinson, 1992).
Or, one may ask, "What does a population census have to do with HRM practices?" (e.g.,
Townley, 1993). In both cases one may answer that the prison's tower and the census have
contributed to the appearance of a particular kind of contemporary subjectivity. It is only
because we, in our society, take for granted such understanding of "self" that it is conceivable
to us that there is anything normal about HRM or TQM.
Frenkel (2008) adopts a postcolonial perspective based on the work of Bhabha
(1990) on management discourse in cross-national knowledge transfer within MNCs.
Her critical theoretical analysis reveals how this discourse is more complex than usually
assumedinvolving mimicry, hybridity, and the third space (in-between the
colonizer and the colonized). Post-colonial studies stress the significance of unequal
power relations to understand the transmission of knowledge and culture For example,
the colonized are encouraged to mimic the colonizers practices for their own good, to
adopt a purer form of a given practice. However, through adaptation of mimicked
practices and by selection of only some areas of mimicry, the colonized are able to enact
the creativity involved in moving among various cultural frameworks and in resisting
the colonizer by disrupting its imposed knowledge and practices.
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The dynamic hybrid

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http://isb.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/06/29/0266242611404261.full.pdf+html
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culture that emerges from such creative disruption, such iterative reinterpretations,
enacts a third space, a space of the in-between. This paper also can make us think on
multinational acquisitions and mergers.








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References
Bhabha, H. K. 1990. Nation and narration. London & New York: Routledge.
Bhabha, H. K. (Ed.). 1994a. The location of culture. London & New York: Routledge.
Bhabha, H. K. 1994b. Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse. In H.
K. Bhabha (Ed.), The location of culture: 8592. London & New York: Routledge.
Bhabha, H. K. 1994c. DissemiNation: Time, narrative and the margins of the modern
nation. In H. K. Bhabha (Ed.), The location of culture: 139170. London & New York:
Routledge.
Derrida, J. 1974. Of grammatoJogy. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Foucault, M. 1979. Discipline and punish. New York: Vintage
Lyotard, J.-F. 1979. (1984 English translation.) The postmodern condition; A report on
fcnowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.