Judith Butler and Organization Theory

Judith Butler and Organization Theory
Author: Melissa Tyler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2019-09-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351673823

2020 will mark thirty years since the first publication of Judith Butler’s ground-breaking book, Gender Trouble. Here, and in subsequent work, Butler argues that gender and other forms of identity can best be understood as performative acts. These acts are what bring our subjectivities into existence, enabling us to be recognized as viable employable social beings, worthy of rights, responsibilities and respect. The three decades since the publication of Gender Trouble have witnessed Butler become one of the most widely cited and controversial figures in contemporary feminist thinking. While it is only in her most recent work that Butler has engaged directly with themes such as work and organization, her writing has profound implications for thinking, and acting, on the relationship between power, recognition and organization. Whilst her ideas have made important in-roads into work, organization and gender studies that are discussed here, there is considerable scope to explore further avenues that her concepts and theories open up. These inroads and avenues are the focus of this book. Judith Butler and Organization Theory makes a substantial contribution to the analysis of gender, work and organization. It not only covers central issues in Butler’s work, it also offers a close reading of the complexities and nuances in her thought. It does so by ‘reading’ Butler as a theorist of organization, whose work resonates with scholars, practitioners and activists concerned to understand and engage with organizational life, organization and organizing. Drawing from a range of illustrative examples, the book examines key texts or ‘moments’ in the development of Butler’s writing to date, positing her as a thinker concerned to understand and address the ways in which our most basic desire for recognition comes to be organized within the context of contemporary labour markets and workplaces. It examines insights from Butler’s work, and the philosophical ideas she draws on, considering the impact of these on work, organization and management studies thus far; it also explores some of the many ways in which her thinking might be mobilized in future, considering what scope there is for a non-violent ethics of organization, and for a (re)assembling of the relationship between vulnerability and resistance within and through organizational politics.

Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly

Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly
Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2015-11-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 067449556X

A Times Higher Education Book of the Week Judith Butler elucidates the dynamics of public assembly under prevailing economic and political conditions, analyzing what they signify and how. Understanding assemblies as plural forms of performative action, Butler extends her theory of performativity to argue that precarity—the destruction of the conditions of livability—has been a galvanizing force and theme in today’s highly visible protests. “Butler’s book is everything that a book about our planet in the 21st century should be. It does not turn its back on the circumstances of the material world or give any succour to those who wish to view the present (and the future) through the lens of fantasies about the transformative possibilities offered by conventional politics Butler demonstrates a clear engagement with an aspect of the world that is becoming in many political contexts almost illicit to discuss: the idea that capitalism, certainly in its neoliberal form, is failing to provide a liveable life for the majority of human beings.” —Mary Evans, Times Higher Education “A heady immersion into the thought of one of today’s most profound philosophers of action...This is a call for a truly transformative politics, and its relevance to the fraught struggles taking place in today’s streets and public spaces around the world cannot be denied.” —Hans Rollman, PopMatters

Precarious Life

Precarious Life
Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2020-10-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1839763035

In her most impassioned and personal book to date, Judith Butler responds in this profound appraisal of post-9/11 America to the current US policies to wage perpetual war, and calls for a deeper understanding of how mourning and violence might instead inspire solidarity and a quest for global justice.

The Force of Nonviolence

The Force of Nonviolence
Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1788732782

Judith Butler’s new book shows how an ethic of nonviolence must be connected to a broader political struggle for social equality. Further, it argues that nonviolence is often misunderstood as a passive practice that emanates from a calm region of the soul, or as an individualist ethical relation to existing forms of power. But, in fact, nonviolence is an ethical position found in the midst of the political field. An aggressive form of nonviolence accepts that hostility is part of our psychic constitution, but values ambivalence as a way of checking the conversion of aggression into violence. One contemporary challenge to a politics of nonviolence points out that there is a difference of opinion on what counts as violence and nonviolence. The distinction between them can be mobilised in the service of ratifying the state’s monopoly on violence. Considering nonviolence as an ethical problem within a political philosophy requires a critique of individualism as well as an understanding of the psychosocial dimensions of violence. Butler draws upon Foucault, Fanon, Freud, and Benjamin to consider how the interdiction against violence fails to include lives regarded as ungrievable. By considering how ‘racial phantasms’ inform justifications of state and administrative violence, Butler tracks how violence is often attributed to those who are most severely exposed to its lethal effects. The struggle for nonviolence is found in movements for social transformation that reframe the grievability of lives in light of social equality and whose ethical claims follow from an insight into the interdependency of life as the basis of social and political equality.

Gender Trouble Couplets

Gender Trouble Couplets
Author: A. W. Strouse
Publisher: punctum books
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2019
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1950192512

Judith Butler's GENDER TROUBLE: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity radically claimed that the sexed body is a fallacy, discursively constructed by the performance of gender. A.W. Strouse has undertaken to rewrite Butler's classic tome into an octosyllabic poem. Inspired by the rhyming encyclopedias of the Middle Ages, Strouse transforms each of Butler's sentences into punchy medieval couplets. This performative repetition of Chapter 1 of Butler's now classic treatise on gender, identity, and sexuality, "Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire," deconstructs Butler's deconstruction. Relishing in the campiness of rhyme and meter-in the bodily pleasures of form-Strouse's GENDER TROUBLE COUPLETS, Volume 1 is an imitation for which there is no original. Butler's GENDER TROUBLE, perhaps, was poetry all along. "In the tradition of the Revolutionary Cookbook ("Eggs Benedict Arnold"), teaching Structuralism through Hipster vs. Amish beards ("Is that beard ironic?"), and literary hostess gifts ("Lady Macbeth's Soap"), comes this brilliant rhymed couplet version of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble. Rarely has a poet applied his gifts to a more deserving subject. Strouse is the the Jeff Koons of queer theory, the Kim Kardashian of différance, the Lisa Frank of same-sex. In the grand tradition of rhymed pedagogical commentary - think Chaucer teaching Litel Louis how to use the Astrolabe - this funny and useful book will be an instant bestseller, a perfect gift for the nerd and hipster in your life, and the best Valentine cadeau for your secret queer crush whom you want but cannot quite name." Anna M. Klosowska, author of QUEER LOVE IN THE MIDDLE AGES (Palgrave, 2005) A.W. STROUSE teaches medieval literature at The New School, and has published a wide variety of creative works, including MY GAY MIDDLE AGES (punctum, 2015) and with Patty Barth, TRANSFER QUEEN (punctum, 2018).

The Judith Butler Reader

The Judith Butler Reader
Author: Sara Salih
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2004-03-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780631225942

The Judith Butler Reader is a collection of writings that span her impressive career and trace her intellectual history. Judith Butler, author of influential books such as Gender Trouble, has built her international reputation as a theorist of power, gender, sexuality and identity Organized in active collaboration between Judith Butler and Sara Salih Collects together writings that span Butler’s impressive career as a critical philosopher, including selections from both well-known and lesser-known works Includes an introduction and editorial material to assist students in their readings of theories that stand at the forefront of contemporary theoretical and political debates

Bodies that Matter

Bodies that Matter
Author: Judith Butler
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1993
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780415903660

The author of "Gender Trouble" further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most material dimensions of sex and sexuality. Butler examines how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the matter of bodies, sex, and gender.

Studying Organization

Studying Organization
Author: Stewart R Clegg
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 492
Release: 1999-04-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1446237192

In response to the needs of lecturers, the acclaimed Handbook of Organization Studies has been made available as two major paperback textbooks. In this, the first of a two-volume paperback edition of the landmark Handbook of Organization Studies, editors Stewart Clegg and Cynthia Hardy survey the field of organization studies. Studying Organization is an ideal textbook around which to build courses on organization theory and research methodology. Central to the enterprise has been a concern to reflect and honour the manifest diversity of the field, including recognition of the extent to which the very notion of a single field of organization studies is debated. Part One locates the study of organization by reviewing some of the most significant theoretical paradigms to have shaped our understanding. The second part reflects on the relationships between theory and research in organization studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Gender in Organizations

The Oxford Handbook of Gender in Organizations
Author: Savita Kumra
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2014-03-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0191632740

The issue of gender in organizations has attracted much attention and debate over a number of years. The focus of examination is inequality of opportunity between the genders and the impact this has on organizations, individual men and women, and society as a whole. It is undoubtedly the case that progress has been made with women participating in organizational life in greater numbers and at more senior levels than has been historically the case, challenging notions that senior and/or influential organizational and political roles remain a masculine domain. The Oxford Handbook of Gender in Organizations is a comprehensive analysis of thinking and research on gender in organizations with original contributions from key international scholars in the field. The Handbook comprises four sections. The first looks at the theoretical roots and potential for theoretical development in respect of the topic of gender in organizations. The second section focuses on leadership and management and the gender issues arising in this field; contributors review the extensive literature and reflect on progress made as well as commenting on hurdles yet to be overcome. The third section considers the gendered nature of careers. Here the focus is on querying traditional approaches to career, surfacing embedded assumptions within traditional approaches, and assessing potential for alternative patterns to evolve, taking into account the nature of women's lives and the changing nature of organizations. In its final section the Handbook examines masculinity in organizations to assess the diversity of masculinities evident within organizations and the challenges posed to those outside the norm. In bringing together a broad range of research and thinking on gender in organizations across a number of disciplines, sub-disciplines, and conceptual perspectives, the Handbook provides a comprehensive view of both contemporary thinking and future research directions.