Tracing the Sphinx from symbol to specters: reflections on the organization of geographies of concern

ABSTRACT

The concept of the gaze plays an important role in (post)colonial organizational analysis. It addresses dynamics of looking and being seen, particularly as they pertain to knowledge and identity. Drawing on Derrida’s writing on spectrality as it intersects with text and aesthetics, we chart a theoretical framework with which we broaden and deepen extant approaches to the gaze. We illustrate its organizational dynamics across two vignettes that examine writing on the Sphinx by Hegel and Mark Twain. Our work broadens the literature on the gaze with a new view on the (re)production of presence and absence. It also deepens reflection by outlining how the occupation of concern is shaped by interested blindness and unease at a gaze from a specter. These insights invite reconsideration of extant views on knowledge and identity within (post)colonial organizational analysis and inspire reflection on how scholars can participate in tracing the organization of geographies of concern.

KEYWORDS:

• Postcolonial
• gaze
• specter spectrality
• aesthetic
• vision
• presence absence
• statue

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Derrida discusses specters and spectrality in reflections on themes in works by theorists such as Heidegger, Hegel, Marx, Freud and Barthes. ‘Specters’ and ‘ghosts’ are also prefaced in works preceding Specters of Marx (1994), the last of which, Memoirs of the Blind (1993), is of particular relevance here due to its focus on aesthetics, tracing and art.

2 McLean (1998) addresses Bungaree, a painting by Augustus Earle (‘an itinerant artist of Empire’).