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Who is the Other in Organizations?
Widows and Orphans
Levinasian
ethics
departs from the centrality of the Other and
speaks about the Other in terms of the widow and
the orphan. But what about Levinasian business
ethics? Widows and orphans are not really relevant
categories for organizations. So what does the
other look like in organizations? That’s the
question which will be central in this article.
In Levinas’ vision the other is the one who can
make me conscious of my imperialistic rationality.
According to Levinas the activity of thinking has
an inherently totalitarian tendency which can lead
us into impasse situations. But for him these
impasses do not have to be definitive. For,
something exists like a shameful confrontation in
which the thinker is being confronted with his
victim’s (the other’s) resistance. He sees himself
and his thinking made questionable. This can lead
to self-criticism and to more reflection and
compassion.
If there is some truth in what Levinas says this
other must be traceable in organizations, but the
question is: in what way can Levinas’ speaking
about the other be related to the world of
management and organization?
In order to be able to answer that question we can
fruitfully turn to parts of Levinas’ anthropology
which are to be found in his early works Le
temps et l’autre (TA), De l’existence à
l’existant (EE) and in Totalité et
Infini (TI). His descriptions of the human
condition treat subjects like action, labor and
rationality which indeed make connections possible
with working life. Those elements will be touched
upon below. Before presenting them I will
introduce the framework in which Levinas positions
those subjects, that is to say the framework of Il-y-a
and hypostasis, and I will give an outline of
the application of that scheme on organizations.
Il-y-a and hypostasis
A central pair of concepts in the writings of Emmanuel
Levinas is the combination of il-y-a and
hypostasis. The combination is of great importance for
Levinas’ description of the human condition. Il-y-a
with Levinas denotes being, but then being in its
specific appearance of formless, undetermined being.
He at times calls it a noise, a roar. It is
frightening, on the one hand because of its
unstoppable character: it is unlimited, continues
endlessly. But on the other hand, and more so, because
of the horrible indifferent character of the il-y-a,
its colossal neutrality. The unlimited aspect
generates weariness regarding the endlessness and the
meaninglessness, the neutral aspect evokes anguish.
Levinas encounters it in insomnia.
Hypostasis is the breaking apart of a being from the
il-y-a. It is the proces of substantiation,
taking a distance from the surrounding being, at
first by assuming a position in space and time and
next by creating a world, that is by naming things
and by developing consciousness. It is: becoming a
subject. The subjects choosing of position and the
creation of its own time are to be seen as a first
escape from the disgusting il-y-a. And as a
sequel to that the being that originates in this
way: man, plans his future and designs his world in
a rational way. So, the hypostasis means a
substantiation vis à vis the il-y-a.
But that substantiation appears to be vulnerable.
The hypostasis is never sufficiently strong to
eliminate the il-y-a completely. The sea of
the il-y-a keeps dashing against the isle
that has come up in its midst. Returning in its
original or in a disguised shape it takes back the
achievements of the hypostasis. The il-y-a
cleaves. It reappears into the heart of the
rationally managed world of man. The achievement of
time turns into a new endless continuum, namely that
of a planned and closed future. The achievement of a well-arranged and named
world degenerates into a collection of dogma´s and
reïfications, or, out of aversion against that, into
a new kind of indeterminacy and indifference. The
highest form of victory over the il-y-a,
rationality, turns out to be carrier of the same
properties that characterized the il-y-a:
meaninglessness and indifference.
Here comes to the fore what can be called the
“deficiency of rationality”. The very rationality
that helps us escape the disgust of the meaningless
il-y-a, leads to forms of closeness,
self-complacency and uneasiness that make return the
expelled meaninglessness. Levinas does not give an
explanation for this, but stresses this deficiency
of rationality and makes heavy of it. Is there no
escape then? he wonders. Is this impasse the last we
can say about it?
Levinas does not think so. He notes that we humans
experience the impasse intensely, but that often
enough we find ways to cope with it. That’s what he
is interested in. What exactly happens when we cope
with it? Levinas thinks that, if you want to
describe that, the phenological method, which he is
so fond of, does not suffice. To be able to say at
least something about the escape he has to take
recourse to themes with what he calls a mystical or
transcendent character. It is in our confrontation
with death, with time, with eros and with the other
that, according to Levinas, an opening is presented
to us which really puts the il-y-a on a
distance, be it always only temporarily. To the
extent that Levinas’ work further develops, his
interest focuses ever more on the other as the one
who pre-eminently presents us the opening.
Organizations
Organizations find
themselves in the field of force of the il-y-a
and the hypostasis. As we shall see below, one even
could say that organizations are an embodiment of
hypostasis in its more developed form. But not at
the level of a individual (the subject) but of
groups of people. The phenomena that characterize
the rationality-stage, like the appropriation of
time, the planning of the future, the working with
representations and the rational design and control
of the own world are essential aspects of organizing
and organizations. This means that the impasse we
spoke about above, and that is given with the
deficiency of the rationality, is also within the
world of organization a well-known phenomenon. This
may be shown by the perennially returning
control-dilemma: the necessary control appears to
have strained relations with the need for creative
and motivated workers. At the level of
organizational theory this comes to the fore in the
deadlock between positivistic reductionism and
postmodernistic sterility.
At the same time it can be argued, in line with the
tendency of Levinas’ philosophy as a whole, that
also in organizations people know to find the
escape. People do regularly escape the closeness of
a planned future and the totalitarian constraint of
rational structures. There actually ís sensemaking
in organizations. It dóes occur that traditional,
rigid controlsystems give way to systems that give
workers more space. It dóes occur that bosses who
could organize a business at will afterwards want to
account for their actions. It dóes occur that
consultants who never bothered to thrust their
rationally accounted for ideas upon organizations,
in confrontation with everyday praxis open
themselves for completely different sounds from the
workfloor.
It may be wondered whether in these situations one
can talk of an escape, as Levinas would have it. Do
these developments not entirely fit in in the
autonomous dialectics of reasonableness and of
enlightenment to arrive at more humane forms of
organization?
I hold the position that, on the basis of Levinas’
work, one certainly can accord a place to these last
mentioned developments as a driving force, but it is
a secundary place. From the viewpoint of Levinas the
main impuls towards innovation and humanization
stems from an intrusion from outside the rational
order. This has much to do with the totalitarian
character which Levinas ascribes to reason and the
organizational conscience. Because of that feature
it is exactly the confrontation with the
totalitarian character of one’s own rationality and
the embarrasment with one’s own ideology which
generate truly new insights.
As indicated above that confrontation for Levinas
takes primarily place in the encounter with the other.
In order to get a better understanding of those
confrontations within organizations it therefore is
important to determine more precisely what, within the
context of organizations, the other looks like. Who
is, within the framework of organizations, the Other?
Action, labor and rationality
To
answer that question it may be helpful to start
from what Levinas says about getting into action,
about labor and acting rationally. These themes
come up in Levinas’ work when he discusses the
hypostasis. As we saw Levinas describes the
hypostasis, conceived of as a substantiation in
respect of the il-y-a, as a proces that
contains several phases. The proces starts with
choosing position with regard to the il-y-a,
passes through the phase of reinforcing that
position without any role for consciousness, and
results in a phase in which consciousness plays an
important role.
Hypostasis’ first phase
The conceived point
of departure for the hypostasis is a situation of
aversion against the il-y-a, in combination with the necessity for the
emerging subject, if it is to become really subject,
to choose position with respect to the anonymous il-y-a. We may use the word
‘taking a distance’ to indicate this proces, but
that tells only the half story. The subject will not
be able to ban the il-y-a completely. In the taking up of its own
being the subject will also have to entertain a
relationship with the il-y-a, that is: with that being which at the
same time arouses fright and disgust. As Levinas
writes in Existence
and Existents:
“The questioning of Being is an experience of Being
in its strangeness. It is then a way of taking up
Being…The question is itself a manifestation of the
relationship with Being. Being is essentially alien
and strikes against us” (EE, 9).
So the question is
one of entering into a relationship with something
repulsive. Weariness and sloth characterize this
situation and form the expression of the reluctance
which holds the emerging subject in its grip.The
weariness has to do with the impossibility to escape
the boundless being, perhaps even more so in
hypostased form than without hypostasis because
hypostasis presupposes a kind of coming to terms with
being and therewith acceptation of being. In all cases
there is one rule: you háve to be. There is “… a
commitment to exist, with all the seriousness and
harshness of an unrevokable contract” (EE, 12). The
weariness is not so much a content of consciousness
(it finds itself at a too early stage in the
hypostasis for that), but something which happens, and
primarily so a refusal, a refusal to exist:
“Weariness by all its being effects this refusal to
exist” (EE, 12). This weariness thus does not have any
link with action. The weariness boggles at action.
With sloth, or indolence, this is different. Levinas
links sloth to human action, namely the beginning of
action: “Indolence is essentially tied up with the
beginning of an action: the stirring, the getting
up…It may inhere in the act that is being realized, in
which case the performance rolls on as on an ill-paved
road, jolted about by instants each of which is a
beginning all over again” (EE, 13). The emerging
subject has erected itself, but incessantly falls
back. It keeps starting up. The same repugnance that
preceded the beginning of action returns here. The
refusal of existence pervades the indolence as well
and manifests itself precisely in that repeated
backslide from action. “And indolence, as a recoil
before action, is a hesitation before existence, an
indolence about existing” (EE, 15).
Levinas stresses that all this is not nice. The
pleasures of the hypostasis are reached by the subject
only in a later stage, the phase of enjoyment. There
he speaks about play, here about the necessity of “one
must try to live”. Sloth at this stage is linked with
repugnance against the constraint to exist. The
opportunities which are offered to the subject at this
stage above all present trouble and sorrow: The
beginning of an act “…is concerned with itself…It
possesses riches which are a source of cares before
being a source of enjoyment” (EE,15).
Whereas sloth is somehow connected with a beginning
of action, the loss of the beginning and the next
restart, Levinas places fatigue in the full display
of activity. The subject has already taken up its
own existence, or, more precisely, is incessantly
engaged in taking up its existence. But existence
takes a lead over the subject, the subject cannot
keep up well with existence; the subject is a moment
behind its existence. This relaxation of the grip on
its own existence, that´s fatigue. “It struggles
behind the instant it is going to take on” (EE, 22).
Fatigue is about the exertion that is needed for
that. That effort gives the activity a double
character: “Action is then by essence subjection and
servitude, but also the first manifestation, of the
very constitution, of an existent, a someone
that is” (EE, 23). Effort and fatigue thus are part
of the genesis of the subject, which, according to
Levinas, may be succinctly characterized as the
taking upon itself of existence by the
existent.
Hypostasis’ second phase
Compared to the tragedy and
heaviness of the first phase of the hypostasis the
second phase strikes us because of its much more
pleasant features. Once the substantiation of the
subject has started off, this movement develops
further in a way Levinas describes mainly in
positive terms. Levinas often calls the hypostasis
after the phase of the fatigue a “separation”
(namely between the indeterminate being and the
emergent subject) and the main features of
separation are enjoyment, labor and finally
representation.
The enjoyment is a name for the stage in the
substantiation of the subject in which the subject
no longer just melts with the surrounding being. It
has acquired a relationship with that being. The
nourishment which is enjoyed by the enjoying being
is taken from what Levinas calls “the elements”. By
that he means wind, earth, sea, heaven, air and all
the rest which supports man and which constitutes,
after the separation, the environment of the
enjoying being. Elements are not to be considered as
things, but as qualities which offer themselves to
the senses. This corresponds with the affective,
sensory character of the enjoyment which at several
places is stressed by Levinas.
The role the enjoyment plays in the proces of
hypostasis lies in the particular form of
independence which is introduced with the enjoyment.
Preceding the enjoyment there is a situation of
indeterminacy: the being coïncides with the whole
from which it derives its nourishment, which can be
interpreted as pure dependency. The enjoyment
according to Levinas’ description causes a change in
that situation. A distance is being created, the
dependency can be suspended and in this way the
paradoxical figure arises of a being which has
untied itself from a world on which nevertheless it
feeds itself (TI, 131)! The enjoyment is a decisive
step in the proces of breaking away from the il-y-a.
Labor constitutes both a reaction on and a deepening
of the enjoyment. It is reaction in sofar the
sensory enjoyment and the reliability of the
elements imply uncertainty. Labor can, by seizing
and fixing, wrest things from the elemental and in
this way reduce uncertainty. From this point of view
the trouble of effort cleaves also to labor: “The
ancient curse of labor does not only lie in the
necessity of working to feed oneself; it is already
wholly to be found in the instant of effort (EE,
24).
On the other hand labor is a deepening of the
enjoyment. For, labor introduces us to the world of
things and objects, with the possibility to seize
and enjoy them. This did not come up at the stage of
sheer taking up existence, that is: in the phase of
action. “But if the active moment of activity, that
which makes it actual, is nothing else than the
taking up of the present, labor concerned with the
objects of the world seems to contain more than
this” (EE, 25). By the directedness towards objects,
the acquisition thereof and the satisfaction that
goes with it a play-element comes in which connects
to the enjoyment. The subject develops a kind of
relationship with labor that resembles the
relationship with the elemental in the enjoyment:
there is dependency, but the dependency can be
suspended and so turn into play and enjoyment.
Levinas stresses that at this stage of the
separation we cannot speak of knowing or thinking.
Labor and taking-into-possession are the work of the
hand, “…the organ of grasping and taking, the first
and blind grasping in the teeming mass” (TI: 159),
and not of the mind that sees and represents.
The step towards knowing and thinking, which is the
completing step of the hypostasis, is being taken
with the development within the subject of
consciousness, rational thought or what Levinas
calls the light. That step is characterized by the
appearance of representations and is made possible
by the preparing work of labor and possession. They
achieve the “very mobilization of the thing, grasped
by the hand” (TI: 163) and that is a condition for
the appearance of representations in the conscious
mind. This appearance of representations is
considered by Levinas as the culmination of the
hypostasis: the separation between the subject and
the surrounding being are being radicalized in it.
“…life in the world is consciousness inasmuch as it
provides the possibility of existing in a withdrawal
from existence”(EE, 37). The subject now has its own
world.
Arrived at this stage, Levinas pays much attention
to the character of representation. What interests
him in that, is its illusory nature. The illusion of
representation consists in the ability of the
representing consciousness to see itself as origin
of the world. “Representation consistst in the
possibility of accounting for the object as though
it were constituted by a thought, as though it were
a noëma” (TI:128). That this is illusory is evident
for Levinas. He takes much trouble to show that
thinking is conditioned: only if preliminary
conditions are satisfied – i.a. by way of labor –
man can arrive at thinking and knowing. With this
peculiarity that thinking subsequently tends to
forget its own conditions: it sees itself as
the condition for the world in stead of the other
way round. That’s the illusion (but sometimes for
Levinas also: the genius) of representation.
For Levinas this illusory nature of representation
is not necessarily to be valued negatively. His
appreciation for the achievements of the hypostasis
and the escape from the il-y-a is too big
for that. But he points to the problems that are
connected with the problematic nature of
representation: it creates a new form of
totalitarianism. “Reason is single. And in this
sense knowledge in the world never meets something
really different. That’s the deep truth of
idealism”(TA, 53).
Hypostasis and organizations
When Levinas discusses representation, nowhere in his
work he connects this with human work, as, in
opposition to that, he does connect weariness, sloth
and, of course, labor with effort and work. But it is
not difficult to make that link. The organizing
function of man, resulting in, for example, working
organizations, pre-eminently makes use of the power of
human rationality. Robert Cooper has shown how working
with representations is an essential feature of
organizing (Cooper 1992).
That means that at the level of organization the
ambivalence of the hypostasis reappears. On the one
hand there is the achievement of the escape from the
il-y-a that according to Levinas cannot be
valued enough. But on the other hand there is the
continuous return of the il-y-a, and that
even in two appearances. The primeval il-y-a
manages at times to break through our rational
organization and control and because of that the
danger of being flooded by unchained elements keeps
permanently threatening. But besides that the
solitude or reason, which is given with the high
degree of rationality of organizations, generates
its own version of the il-y-a. This il-y-a
shows itself in the closed, totalitarian character
of organizations that may be linked to the misplaced feeling of sovereignty and
the forgetting of its own origins, which are
defining features of representation. The kind of
totalitarity that is linked to this second
appearance of representation is no longer the
totalitarity of the primeval il-y-a, but it
still is totalitarity. Specific forms of repugnance
and weariness belong to it, which nevertheless do
remind us of the supposedly dispelled primeval il-y-a,
specifically in the experience of meaninglessness
and uneasiness that go with it. So in both its
original and its disguised form the il-y-a
keeps returning, it cleaves. “In the hypostasis of
an instant – in which a subject’s mastery, power or
virility are manifested as being in a world, in
which intention is the forgetting of oneself in
light and a desire for things, in the abnegation of
charity and sacrifice – we can discern the return of
the il-y-a. The hypostasis, in participating
in the il-y-a, finds itself again to be a
solitude, in the definitiveness of the bond with
which the ego is chained to its self”(EE, 84).
We may conclude that organizing and organizations
may be linked to the hypostasis in its most
cristallized stage: the stage of representation,
that is to say, of rationality. That means that
organizations are strongly characterized by an
important feature of rationality according to
Levinas, namely: the tendency, in its representative
thinking, to consider itself as the origin of the
world. Representative thinking is troubled by the
illusion that its existence is self-evident and
mirrors a pre-given order. It does not know anymore
about a situation which preceded that order, it
forgets its own origins. That’s why, for
organizations, in this condition of blindness,
weariness or sloth are no issues, no more than the
refusal of existence which pervades the getting into
action. They conceive of labor as something which
according to Levinas is only its partial truth: a
play, that is: as “labor mystique, which appeals to themes of joy or
freedom through labor”
(EE: 22).
The Other
But, in opposition to organizations, people cannot
simply be linked to one of the hypostasis’ stages.
Neither can people in the context of organizations
simply be linked that way. Levinas’ description of the
genesis of the subject is linear, but should be
understood, I think, in such a way that man
permanently bears all hypostasisstages within himself.
He can permanently experience them. It will be clear
that in our intellectual work we deal with
representations. But we also know of the laboriously
getting into action, through repugnance and sloth.
The fact that to people in organizations can be linked
many stages of the hypostasis and to organizations
just one stage causes a tension between organizations
and the people who work there. Organizations, as
social phenomena in which preparedness for action is
already taken for granted, tend to ignore the problems
of the early stages of the hypostasis, like weariness
and sloth. But individuals, working in organizations,
do not forget those origins. The very thing
organizations ignore keeps returning for people: the
trouble to collect oneself and to organize oneself in
the middle of an anonymous, threatening existence.
This discrepancy between the hypostasis-stage of
organizations and the stage in which individuals find
themselves, can with workers who are sensible for
that, arouse repugnance against organizing and
organization. This can manifest itself as job-refusal,
melancholy or less articulated resistance. In all
cases there is an amount of suffering by the employee
in the organization.
Can we now, on the basis of what has been said above
about the genesis of the subject and about
organizations, say more about what the other looks
like in the context of organizations? I propose to
consider the individual who suffers from the
blindness and meaninglessness of organizational
rationality as Levinas’ Other, transposed to the
context of organizations. This description implies a
certain measure of incompatability of the other with
organizations. Given the self-evidence for
organizations of their own existence and given the
pretentions of rationality and justified order that
organizations have, the suffering of the other, the
repugnance and the weariness appear as
incomprehensible and unreasonable. The one who
confronts the organization with that repugnance and
weariness really stands outside.
Something
of
this description is to be found in the story below
about Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman
Melville.
Bartleby is the story about a clerk of
a lawyersfirm at Wallstreet in the middle of the
19th century. Bartleby has been hired
by the firm, together with two other clerks, to
copy legal documents. This is a very dry and husky
sort of business, but Bartleby surprises everybody
by his fervour, accurateness and productivity.
That ´s why the lawyer, as the boss of the firm,
is very pleased with this new worker, even if to
him a more cheerful character than the pallid,
withdrawn figure of Bartleby would have been
welcome. His enthousiasm however gets tempered
when, on the third day, Bartleby refuses to do a
job that for this type of business is very common.
Copies of documents have to be compared with the
originals and everyone of the clerks is regularly
being asked to do that. So also Bartleby, but he
tells his boss that he doesn´t want to, or, in his
words: ‘I would prefer not to’. The lawyer is
completely taken aback for a moment, but business
calls. He concludes to come back to it at a later
time.
But this
scene repeats itself and every time Bartleby uses
the same formula: I would prefer not to. The boss
starts brooding. Normally he would not have any
problem with firing one who refuses his job, but
some way he is being disarmed by the performance
of Bartleby. The formula he uses to express his
refusal has much to do with that. The boss has
been touched and seeks to talk with Bartleby but
that appears to be impossible. On the request to
be at least a bit reasonable comes the answer that
at this moment he prefers not to be a bit
reasonable. This situation brings the lawyer into
a clew of contradictory feelings and thoughts,
ranging from decided rejection of Bartleby to
melancholy and solidarity with a lost person.
The affair escalates when, at a certain moment,
Bartleby announces that he prefers not to copy
anymore. It must come to dismissal now,Bartleby is
being told to have left in six days. When on the
seventh day the boss finds him at the office it
takes him great effort not to get into a black
temper. At the same time he feels unable to be
cruel to Bartleby. He wonders what his conscience
would prescribe him at this moment. The lawyer
chooses as solution to self abandon the building:
he moves his office, leaving Bartleby behind. In a
cleared out room the boss once more says goodbye.
He has to tear himself away from Bartleby, the man
he wanted to get rid of. The landlord finally does
what the lawyer could not: call the police to
remove Bartleby. When the lawyer hears about this
his reaction is ambivalent: ‘At first I was
indignant; but at last almost approved. I do not
think I would have decided upon this course
myself; and yet, under such peculiar
circumstances, it seemed the only plan’. Bartleby
dies in custody with the police.
In this story Bartleby
functions as does Levinas’ other. He confronts his
boss and makes him baffled and unfit for action
against Bartleby. Of course the boss does have,
fysically and juridically, the means for action,
but some kind of mysterious incapability takes him
in its grip. And that seems to have to do with his
perception of a deep seated repugnance with
Bartleby, which does not lead to agression or
explanation, but to a kind of charming
melancholia. The boss’s self-evident course of
action has been broken through. “[The face]
involves a calling into question of oneself, a
critical attitude which is itself produced in face
of the other and under his authority” (TI: 81).
Here takes place at the level of the organization
what Levinas wanted to describe for philosophy:
“It is this resistance, this point of exteriority
to the appropriative movement of philosophical
conceptuality, that Levinas seeks to describe in
his work” (Critchley 2002: 17).
Abbreviations
EE |
Levinas,
E. Existence and Existents.
|
TA |
Levinas,
E. Le temps et l’autre.
|
TI |
Levinas,
E. Totality and Infinity
|
Literature
Cooper, R. (1992) Formal Organization as
Representation: Remote Control,
Displacement and Abbreviation. In:
Reed, M. (1992) Rethinking
Organization. London: Sage.
|
Critchley, S. (2002) Introduction.
In: Critchley, S. en Bernasconi, R. (eds.)
(2002) The Cambridge Companion to
Levinas. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
|
Levinas,
E. (1983) [1947] Le temps et
l’autre. Parijs: Presses
Universitaires de France.
|
Levinas, E. (1991) [1961] Totality and Infinity. An Essay
on Exteriority. English translation
by Alphonso Lingis of Totalité et
Infini. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
|
Levinas,
E. (2001) [1947] Existence and
Existents. English translation by
Alphonso Lingis of De
l´existence à l´existant.
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
|
Ven, N. van der (2011) The
Shame of Reason in Organizational
Change. A Levinassian
Perspective. London: Springer. |
|