Introducing the French psychodynamics of work perspective to critical management education: why do the work task and the organization of work matter?

In this essay, we call on critical management education to focus on the organization of work and the nature of work tasks. While critical action learning and both reflexive and psychodynamic approaches to management education situate learning in actual work experiences, they do not explicitly encourage reflection on work tasks and the organization of work. Our aim is to draw on the French psychodynamics of work perspective to argue that reflection on concrete experiences and processes of work is important because work has significant implications for workers’ health and for society. We also use two vignettes to discuss the implications of French psychodynamics of work for the practice of critical management education

The ambivalence of resistance and identity: Using psychoanalysis in a case study of "Gringo Magazine".

There is a lack of critical social psychological research which sufficiently investigates the complexities of resistance to racism. The main question which has motivated this research is how can we understand the affective aspect of resistance to racism and identity, along with the multiple and unconscious processes and dynamics of identity, without falling back to individualism, essentialism and determinism. This thesis suggests how Lacanian psychoanalysis can be used to highlight the ambivalent, overdetermined and libidinal nature of such resistance processes. The Lacanian subject is a split subject, a subject of lack, and thus I argue that resistance to racism is much more than simply about 'knowledge' or 'agency'. Social Identity Theory is also reinterpreted and criticised along these lines. It is by taking seriously not only issues of power, but also Lacanian notions of the big Other, desire, fantasy and the three registers of subjectivity (Real, Symbolic and Imaginary) that we can recognise why resistance to racism can be an ambivalent and contradictory process. A type of discourse analysis which is in constant dialogue with significant psychoanalytical notions is adopted in order to examine the Swedish anti-racist magazine Gringo. Firstly, I understand Gringo's renegotiation of the immigrant (or blatte) as being in relation to the desire of the big Other. On the one hand. Gringo conforms to the ego-ideals of the Swedish big Other and on the other hand, it resists these ego-ideals by fetishising the representation of blatte. Secondly, I show that the magazine may challenge Swedishness at a Symbolic level, but there is still an attachment to this identity at the levels of the Imaginary or the Real. This ambivalent nature of Gringo's critique of the Swedish identity has not prevented some members of the public from perceiving Gringo as a threat to a narcissistic notion of Swedishness. Thirdly, I argue that Gringo's challenge to institutional racism and exclusion can be categorised in-to three groups: critique in the form of humour/jokes, hysterical critique and obsessional critique. The study concludes that Gringo may have made overt and unsettled certain of the constituent elements of the fantasy of Swedishness, but its overriding function was to evoke a temporary experience of castrated jouissance

Entrepreneurship, incongruence and affect: drawing insights from a Swedish anti-racist organisation

In recent years, entrepreneurship has been reconceptualised as social change. Understood as such, entrepreneurship can be viewed to disrupt and disturb the social order. We argue in this paper that Foucault’s notion of heterotopia and Lacan’s concepts of the real and anxiety help us to conceptualize the disturbing aspect of entrepreneurship as social change, and understand why the latter may encounter social resistance. Our contribution to critical entrepreneurship literature is to first emphasise that entrepreneurship instigates social change by introducing incongruence, and second, to highlight that this process can be affective: it can create anxiety. The paper uses an illustrative historical case-example of a Swedish anti-racist commercial magazine (Gringo) to elucidate these points. We conclude by pointing out that anxiety may be necessary for the provocation of social transformation

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a theory and clinical practice that centers on the role of the unconscious in human life. Generally, psychoanalysis is used by practitioners and scholars interested in psychological experiences at work but not satisfied with cognitivist and behavioral approaches. The links between psychoanalysis and work and organizational psychology are ambiguous. Today, not many papers published in the major work and organizational psychology journals draw from psychoanalysis. There are, however, many future avenues for the employment of psychoanalysis, especially for researchers and practitioners interested in exploring emotional, disruptive, and repudiated aspects of work and organizational life