Revitalising labour process theory: a prolegomenon to fatal writing

Abstract

This article attempts a revitalisation of labour process study by way of an oblique entry and transversal movement through the writing of contemporary labour process theory. Making use of a relatively novel and experimental mode of reading and writing, including ‘signature effects’ and homophonic and homonymic play, the paper proposes ways of escape from the double‐binds, infinite regress, and solipsism inherent to the labour process. Tracing the set of idiomatic marks that forms the signature effect of core labour process theory, the paper discovers the absent‐present play of the motor car in labour process writing forming a ‘crypt’ that gives rise to all manner of world‐text effects. In an attempt to subvert this repression we use the model of the motor car as an explicit mode of transport for our thinking that takes us out of labour process theory in ways that might delimit its boundaries and conditions of possibility/impossibility. In so doing we begin to exercise a very different form of organisation studies.

Keywords:

• labour process theory
• applied grammatology
• signature effects
• automobility

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editors of Culture & Organization (Heather Höpfl, Peter Case, and Simon Lilley) and two anonymous reviewers for their patience and help in developing this paper. It would also not have been possible to write this paper without the help and encouragement of Hannah Knox and Alf Rehn. Thanks also to Rowland Curtis and members of the 2005 Critical Perspectives on Accounting session at which an earlier version of this paper was presented held at Barcuh College, New York.

Notes

1. Etymologically, theory derives from sight and spectacle, closely related to the sense we have of ‘theatre’. The word is in some ways a portmonteau combining ‘thea’ and ‘horoa’. As Heidegger (1977, 164) explains, ‘thea’ describes the outward look of a thing in which phenomenon shows itself and ‘horao’ means to ‘look at something attentively, to look it over, to view it closely’. Our entire tradition of theorising, conceptualising (to conceive) and thinking is disciplined by this priority given to sight, to light and dark, and the sun, of course, is the principle metaphor that founds western philosophy.

2. Of course, Derrida is also working simultaneously to decentre the ocularcentric prejudice in our thinking, encouraging us to read and write with taste, touch and smell. Embryonic efforts in organization studies to think and write with a broader sensibility can be found in Corbett (2006) and Mills and Mills (2006).