White fantasy, white betrayals:On neoliberal ‘feminism’ in the US presidential election process

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Transferential Loss:Unconscious Dynamics of Love, Learning, and Grieving

In this essay, I work with transference as a relational dynamic from psychoanalysis, to analyze love and loss experienced through learning relationships. Transference is the unconscious transfer of emotions from past relationships to present experiences. I explore transference in learning by disclosing my case study of dyadic learning, guided by Indian scholarship about a guru-shishya/teacher-student relationship of hierarchical, processual learning. I discuss the significance of transference for analyzing emotions of this superior-subordinate learning dyad, through my experience of transferential loss. I conceptualize transferential loss as emotions that accompany the loss of a formal, unequal, time-bound teacher-student transference relationship. I analyze this loss by scrutinizing shifting authority dynamics that I encountered with a loved academic guide, or guru. Through surfacing changes in transference and the pain of losing the teacher-student learning, this essay challenges neoliberal approaches to higher education which valorize instrumental and disembodied goals. Transferential loss connects Indian psychoanalysis about dyads and transference to management learning scholarship, including the importance of the unequal guru-shishya conceptualization for critical management education. This essay contributes to psychoanalysis in management scholarship, develops the concept of transference for learning contexts, and offers a case analysis to the management literature on grief, love, and academic self-disclosures

A psychoanalytic probe into Academic Othering of the United States:Defenses of splitting and projection, consequences, and alternatives through emotion work

For this Special Paper Series of Organization, I work with a psychoanalytic perspective to scrutinize organizing processes as critical academics—specifically, unconscious dynamics of responding to US-based social crises. I contend that it is not feasible to organize effectively against the violent hate of right-wing populist movements sustained by Othering without commitment to confronting academics’ individual and collective Othering and defensive processes. These defenses include splitting and projecting onto convenient Others, which can serve performative gratifications. Through analysis of critical academic declarations in 2017, I analyze Academic Othering of the United States. Splitting the United States off as the ‘bad’ Other of the ‘good’ United Kingdom/European Union/non-United States undermines critical analysis and potential for solidarity and relational concern. Without probing these uncomfortable dynamics, we damage opportunities as elite, privileged academics to make a difference for global struggles, and collude in exclusion. Undertaking emotion work on our academic identities to move away from the defense of splitting, and toward nuance with Klein’s depressive position, will support listening to affected voices and extending—not merely performing—concern and care

Who cares for academics? We need to talk about emotional well-being including what we avoid and intellectualize through macro-discourses

This paper explores academics’ wellbeing through analysing published sensitive disclosures, bringing to journal space the pain, rawness, and emotional suffering of individuals’ experiences. We confront the taboos of speaking openly about mental health and emotional wellbeing in academic institutions, with masculine structures and encroaching neoliberal discourses that create hostile atmospheres unsupportive of vulnerability and uncertainty. We also challenge existing discourses about academics’ wellbeing, implicitly burdening individuals as responsible for their pain and creating walls of shame, rather than building new healthy structures. By spotlighting the voices of academics’ emotional disclosures, intensified by embodied social inequalities, we plead for openness in formal academic outlets for sharing pre-existing emotional struggles and new wounds created by cruelly competitive, winnertakes-all structures, fortified by neoliberal ideals. Led by individuals’ voices and experiences, we make recommendations for supporting academics as an attempt to extract academia from its current perverse state and commit to repair and transformation

‘Oh, was that “experiential learning”?!’ Spaces, synergies and surprises with Kolb’s learning cycle

We share findings from empirical research into Kolb’s experiential learning approach, using our reflections as teachers and data from our undergraduate management students. The experiential learning experience emerges as a space where bodies, feelings and ideas move and develop in intimate relationship with one another. This is a space where teachers exercise authority over, and commitment to, the here-and-now, risking corporeal and intellectual exposure. We probe the concept of experience in experiential learning, suggesting that teachers require a kind of ‘experiential expertise’ to draw both on embodied felt sense and on what one has done in one’s own career to role-model the transformation of experience into knowledge, which is at the heart of Kolb’s theory. We explore a blurring of experiential agency, and the tendency for students to appropriate the teacher’s experience rather than dwell on or develop their own. For us, experiential learning is more usefully seen as ‘relationship-centred’ than ‘student-centred’, and we contrast this relational focus with the way experiential learning seems to have been popularised as anti-interventionist, a kind of educational ‘laissez-faire’. Based on these reflections, we suggest powerful connections between phenomenology and theories of space as a way of conceptualising the complexities and richness of teaching and learning experiences

Bridging the contradictions of social constructionism and psychoanalysis in a study of workplace emotions in India

This paper makes a contribution to the study of emotions in organizations by offering a systematic juxtaposition and cross-fertilization of psychoanalytic and social constructionist approaches. These two traditions have found it hard to communicate in the past when addressing organizational emotions. Points of similarity and tension between them are discussed in connection with two critical case studies of female Indian managers discussing their emotions at the workplace. These were obtained during field work in which emotions were studied through narratives generated by a free-association interview approach. Both the emotions described in the narratives themselves and the emotions of the interview encounter were analysed, as resources for a rapprochement of contrasting perspectives on emotion. This rapprochement acknowledges the psychoanalytic emphasis on unconscious dynamics shaping the emotional lives of individuals and groups, while also honouring the social constructionist emphasis on how emotions are influenced by social, cultural and discursive practices

"Oh, was that 'experiential learning'?!" Spaces, Synergies and Surprises with Kolb's Learning Cycle

ABSTRACT We share findings from empirical research into Kolb's experiential learning (EL) approach, using our reflections as teachers and data from our undergraduate management students. The EL experience emerges as a space where bodies, feelings and ideas move and develop in intimate relationship with one another. This is a space where teachers exercise authority over, and commitment to, the here-and-now, risking corporeal and intellectual exposure. We probe the concept of experience in EL, suggesting that teachers require a kind of 'experiential expertise' to draw both on embodied felt sense and on what one has done in one's own career to role-model the transformation of experience into knowledge, which is at the heart of Kolb's theory. We explore a blurring of experiential agency, and the tendency for students to appropriate the teacher's experience rather than dwell on or develop their own. For us, EL is more usefully seen as 'relationship-centred' than 'student-centred', and we contrast this relational focus with the way EL seems to have been popularised as antiinterventionist, a kind of educational 'laissez-faire'. Based on these reflections, we suggest powerful connections between phenomenology and theories of space as a way of conceptualising the complexities and richness of teaching and learning experiences. Key words: experiential learning; embodiment; phenomenology; space; feelings Page 2 THE CASE FOR EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING In the last few decades, experiential learning (EL) has become increasingly prevalent in management education at undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education levels We think the popularity of EL reflects something of a 'turn to experience' in a range of disciplines, including management studies It is perhaps easier to define EL by what it is not. Thus, learning from experience means not merely memorising a pre-defined set of abstract facts and figures, which are subsequently regurgitated in exams. In many ways, EL appears to be as much a movement as a theory It is easy to see why EL is appealing to practitioners and theorists of management education. The idea that EL invites a more active and questioning kind of student participation chimes with the desire to encourage more active and questioning kinds of Page 3 leadership and organizational behaviour However, EL is not without its critics. For instance, In the field of management education, in particular, there has been vibrant debate about EL Nevertheless, EL is a powerful presence on the curriculum of many educational institutions, particularly in its most famous manifestation, Kolb's learning cycle In our university work, EL is now considered a mainstream approach to management education. It is also a core component in teacher training for the Postgraduate Certificate in Page 4 Higher Education (PGCHE) -both our own and that of colleagues in other UK universitiesin which it is positioned as something akin to 'best practice'. Given the significance of EL for our professional development, we wanted to probe what we were being asked to teach and gauge the extent to which our teaching instincts were consistent with Kolb's formulation. Located at the intersection of the two strands of critique mentioned above -critical management studies and phenomenology -the purpose of the research presented in this paper was to explore both our understandings and our practice of EL. We had two basic research questions: First, what is being experienced in Kolb's EL? And second, how might we enhance our own EL practice? METHODS Seminar Design We based this investigation on my (first author's) teaching of resistance to change, a topic which features on many change management courses. Since most people have probably experienced resistance to some aspect of their lives, we considered the topic suitable for an experiential approach within a broader suite of methods, including formal lectures and a more participative, 'experiential' seminar -all taught by me and observed by my coresearcher (second author). This seminar had three components -group-based work, a role-played negotiation and a structured debrief -all of which explicitly encouraged students to 'draw on experience'. For our seminar design, we tried to stay close to Kolb's model Participants Our students were level 3 undergraduates studying for a BSc in Management Studies, many of whom had just returned from their placement year in industry. Their final year at university is felt to be a transition into the corporate world, and their (and our) assumption is that the majority will seek executive roles. At the end of the first lecture on this topic, all 90 students were invited to participate in a research interview with my co-researcher, who had no involvement in teaching or assessing the course. Seven students (five male, two female) volunteered to be interviewed, and their reflections are our first data source. Six were native English speakers; the seventh was fluent in English as a foreign language. All had Page 5 experience of the corporate world, either from their placement year or from careers prior to entering academia as mature students. We took great care to assure students that there was no connection between interview participation and course performance, and university ethics approval had been granted on this basis. The interviews were not analysed until after their exam (approximately two months later), as we assumed it would be possible for me to identify individual students from the audio-recordings, despite the use of pseudonyms throughout the data collection and analysis stages. We also treated my reflections as data for formal analysis. Immediately after the completion of each seminar session, I 'brain-dumped' my thoughts, feelings and reflections on how the session had gone, what it had been like to be there, what I had done, and what I had noted in the students' reactions; this was as if I was being interviewed as a participant myself. At this stage, the aim was to download and capture rather than to qualify or thematise. Interview Design Our semi-structured interview schedule was designed around the phenomenological concept that experience is accessed through different 'attitudes'. One aspect of experience, approached through the 'phenomenological attitude', relates to the way that our lives have a certain subjective feel to them -a felt sense The second aspect of experience relates to what we do when we naturalise it, that is, when we thematise, theorise, order and explain it. This is experience as accessed through the 'natural attitude', a phenomenological concept which refers to the frameworks of understanding with which we structure our worlds, relying on assumptions and explanations from the realm of the natural sciences. The 'natural attitude' is exposed when we try to Page 6 make sense of things and do intellectual work with them. The interview questions which were designed to explore experience in this naturalised, thematised sense were framed in terms of 'how do/did you make sense of this?' and 'what ideas do/did you use for this task?'. Both the interview questions for students and my guide for my own reflections were broadly structured into this two-part template, designed to access experience both in its raw, phenomenological sense of 'what is/was it like?' and in its naturalised sense of 'how do/did you make sense of it?' Thus, we had an a-priori assumption that two sorts of things might be happening when we ask participants to 'draw on their experience'. Analysis The student interviews were conducted and audio-recorded by my co-researcher. I subsequently read each interview closely for meaning by listening to the audio-tape at the same time as engaging with the transcribed text. Thus, in our overall engagement with the student data we had a kind of symmetry, in that I conducted the seminars and listened to/read the interviews, whereas she conducted the interviews and listened to/observed the seminars. Our analytical approach was based on the procedure developed for Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), an idiographic, hermeneutic method (see The procedure we followed was developed for IPA (an inductive method). However, epistemologically, our approach was closer to template analysis A similar procedure was applied to my teacher reflections, where the data were already in written, albeit 'brain-dumped', form. The generation of themes from this data was a little different -experientially if not procedurally -in that I was analysing my own words rather than other people's. We considered swapping roles for this stage of the analysis, and have my co-researcher analyse my experiential data. We decided against this because of the significance we attached to accessing felt sense, something which seemed much easier to do with first-person than third-person data. Following my organization of the data into themes and superordinate themes, my coresearcher reviewed my analysis using Smith's (2011) validity criteria for phenomenological research -transparency of process and plausibility of interpretation. This validity check was slightly different across the two data types, in that my co-researcher had conducted the student interviews herself, and therefore had an intimate connection with the student accounts. She did not, of course, have the same connection with my reflections, but relied on her memories of what the seminars had been like to observe and her reading of my 'brain-dump'. We also used Smith's (2011) validity criterion for evidential density, namely, that for a sample size of four to eight, an idea should feature in at least three participants' accounts to be considered a shared experience. The two of us then discussed our findings, working through both similarities and occasional differences in interpretation. We conducted several iterations of the analysis, producing several versions of findings as we engaged increasingly deeply with the emergent spatial and corporeal qualities of the data, and with the theories that might frame their interpretation. The results upon which this paper is based are summarised in table format in Appendices 2 and 3. In the following sections, we interweave the presentation of results with a theoretical discussion, structured broadly into two parts. The first consists of those themes emerging mostly from the 'what is/was it like?' questions, which we theorise in terms of lived, embodied space. Page 8 LIVED, EMBODIED SPACE The most striking quality of the data that emerged from the 'what is/was it like?' questions was its corporeality. When participants were asked to tap into their sense of how things had been in the EL seminar, they seemed first and foremost to reference their bodies, in terms of how these felt, moved and steadied. There was a seemingly intimate relationship between bodies moving / settling and ideas and emotions similarly moving / settling: When one shifted, the others seemed to shift, too. Moving With and Through Space When I presented the purpose and design of the seminar (see Appendix 1) to the students, there was considerable initial resistance. This was articulated largely in terms of 'huffing and puffing' in irritation at having to move. They had automatically sat themselves in rows, anticipating a lecture-style session, and now they had to shift both their bodies and their expectations: "At first I thought, oh no! Group work! Getting up and getting all uncomfortable again! Moving all the chairs and stuff. What a pain!" (Heather) Once this initial irritation was over, however, the students made use of the space in a variety of ways, not just settling in one configuration but trying out several different arrangements. Several students explicitly connected the size of the room and their autonomy to arrange and re-arrange themselves with the idea of having the freedom to work effectively. This particular room was larger than our usual seminar room (through a quirk of scheduling), and students connected its size and openness with the quality of the work they were able to do: "There was space for the views to move around, maybe." (Angelo) "I think we had to follow the ideas around, kind of see where they would take us." Such references to ideas and views moving around have sensitised us to the dynamics of space, that is, the ebbs and flows of classroom configurations, not just static decisions over layout: If we want ideas to move, we need to create the conditions for such movement. But it was not just the ideas that needed space to move, it was the emotions, too: Page 9 "The emotions were flying everywhere!" (Will) As bodies, emotions and ideas moved, something was also happening to the relationships in the room: They were moving, too. There was a growing sense of trust which seemed to make this learning feel special, a trust amongst fellow students, but it was also trust of and by me. My relationship with these students felt qualitatively different after these sessions; and in subsequent lectures and seminars with me, they seemed much more engaged and readier to work. They seemed to feel honoured that I was able and willing to share my experiences with them, including my stories of failure and finding things difficult, seeing this as a sign of my commitment to them: "If you're that keen to teach me that you'd share this stuff with me, then I've got something worth listening to." (Hannah) Whilst the students were enjoying moving, I was struggling not to move. I found it exceptionally difficult to hold back from jumping in to help or guide whilst the students were engaged in their group discussions and planning their role-play. In one of the seminars, I found myself talking to my co-researcher simply to ensure that I held back from joining in with the students' discussions. My desire to intervene was strong, and I experienced it as a straining, a physical reaching-towards the students and their work. This felt like an instinct to move with the students, not just to shape or direct, but also to be part of the dynamic. To make sense of this theme of movement, we draw on ideas from both phenomenology and theories of space. Writers in both these traditions see movement (its possibility and its prevention) as our most primal sense of selfhood As Tuan (1977:12) explains, "space is experienced directly as having room in which to move... space assumes a rough coordinate frame centered on the mobile and purposive self". For phenomenologists and spatial theorists alike, the embodied rhythms of worldly engagement tend to occupy the realm of the pre-conscious and the intuitive Our analysis of the way in which ideas, emotions and bodies move together chimes with work on walking (Zundel, 2012) and path-making (Ingold, 2011) as metaphors for a mobile and purposive kind of thinking and learning. Zundel (2012:119) suggests that walking offers a way of rethinking our relationship with space, because walking involves experiencing the Page 10 world "not only through the rarefied features of our intellect but through our whole body which is not so much a way of believing about the world, but a condition of being in it." Seen this way, learning is about 'moving with' rather than 'thinking about' ideas. The conditions for movement are highly subjective for, as Tuan (1977:51) suggests, "ample space is not always experienced as spatiousness, and high density does not necessarily mean crowding". Thus, what makes a space the right size and layout for the integrated movement of bodies, ideas and emotions is a complex question. Expressing and Thrusting Into Space The notion of being and feeling free is strongly associated with expression -of one's ideas, one's emotions and one's self, including bodily emissions and secretions such as sweat or tears. As Merleau-Ponty argues, the precondition for us to be able to conceive space is that we have been thrust into it by our bodies, for "the body is essentially an expressive space...not merely one expressive space among the rest...It is the origin of the rest, expressive movement itself" Our participants experienced a sort of spatial thrusting, and articulated this in terms of throwing themselves into the session, 'getting into' it corporeally and intellectually: "The whole thing only worked because I kind of threw myself into it...You know, we all just had to get into it." (Heather) 'Getting into' the space of the learning encounter seemed to require a kind of de-robing, a shedding of whatever might hinder spatial insertion and expression. For Will, the experience was like a snake shedding a dead skin: "I think I had to sort of shed a skin to get into it. You know, stop being so embarrassed." (Will) Hannah talked about this derobing in terms of putting aside a piece of clothing in order to 'get into' the role-play: Page 11 "Once you realise you're gonna have to just do it, you kind of take off that normal cloak, you know, it's a bit humiliating, but it has to be done!" (Hannah) For me, the de-robing involved a sense of shedding the normal teaching armoury. Like the students, I too threw myself into the teaching space wholeheartedly. When I was speaking, I found myself drawing on a wide range of ideas and experiences to share with the group, including 'war stories' and my less flattering, less 'text-book' examples of change management. Even when I was standing back to enable the groups to work on their own, this was an active vigilance; I was intensely attentive to what was going on in the room, acutely enmeshed in the spatial dynamics. Throwing oneself into a learning space is not without its risks. It is a commitment, a gamble, one makes with one's body and one's self. Indeed, we expected the students to mention anxiety, because of our familiarity with the literature on anxiety and learning. In fact, other than the traces of embarrassment highlighted above, the students made very little mention of anxiety. The greatest anxiety seemed to be mine! To shield myself from the anxiety of failing as the 'one who is supposed to know' (French, 1997), I had chosen a topic where I had a large repertoire of knowledge and illustrations upon which to draw. But in reality, my anxieties were not related to knowledge or expertise; they felt more closely connected with fears of personal rejection, including vague fears of being thought unattractive, in looks and/or personality. By throwing myself into the sessions so fully, I felt I had brought more of myself into the teaching room. Therefore, if the sessions did not work, it would be a more personal failure, a more personal rejection, because I had laid more on the line. I noted in my 'brain-dump': "If they resist me here, it's a rejection of me. That's why it's more scary." I noted, too, how reassuring it was to have my co-researcher with me: If I was to be personally rejected by the students, at least I would not be alone! This suggests that EL can be a more threatening teaching activity than more traditional approaches, because it seems to involve committing more of one's self. Such reflections intersect with theorisations of management education as situated practice -a concept which also relates to spatial dynamics -where what is being laid on the line is the teacher's whole person Page 12 Expanding and Energising In theories of spatial experience, the body provides the basic template for the notion of capacity There were many expressions of feelings of fullness in our data. Indeed, often the sense of being full seemed to tip over into a sense of being ready to burst -a movement from reaching to exceeding capacity. This was related both to ideas and to emotions, and was suggested by the frequent use of the word 'intensity'. All of the students referred in some way to the seminar's 'intensity': "It was just such an intense experience...I can't think of any other way of explaining it... just so intense!" (Michael) In Heather's account, such intensity conjured up images for us of a kettle boiling, with a sense of things expanding and bubbling over: "It would all go very calm while we were thinking about it, and then, whoosh, off we all went, all heated, almost throwing the excitement at each other!" (Heather) The most surprising aspect of the energy and intensity of these sessions was how much joy was expressed. All the students talked about how happy they had been during and after the seminars; and several mentioned happiness in their subsequent exam essays on this topic. And it was not just the students who expressed and experienced joy. For me, the atmosphere we created felt almost euphoric. I noted what I could only describe as a surge of happiness as I felt my way through the sessions -a lightness, a lifting sensation, a wash of elation and vitality. This was probably linked to feelings of relief that the personal rejection noted earlier did not seem to happen. But it also felt associated with a sense of privilege in being able to witness and facilitate what seemed to be really positive, rich learning. I noted feeling incredibly proud of the students, and excited by and for them: &qu

"It’s all in the Plot" – Narrative explorations of work-related emotions.

This contribution examines how researchers may study work - related emotions in the field by listenin g carefully and emotionally engaging with stories and narratives. The chapter starts from a recognition that emotion (pathos) is a crucial element of story (mythos), something noted a long time ago by Aristotle. Emotions may seem to surface and subside irr egularly in the course of a story, a drama or a conversation, but they have an inner logic that ties them to various plotlines, such as tragic, comic or epic. In particular, we examine how researchers can re - create the emotions of their respondents as well as their own emotions in the field by recollecting and re - engaging with significant stories as well as metaphors that punctuate their research material