Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry

GENEALOGIES OF BECOMING – ANTENARRATIVE INQUIRY IN ORGANIZATIONS

Mølbjerg Jørgensen, Kenneth Boje, David M.

Aalborg University, Denmark | New Mexico State University

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Abstract

We propose in this article to take a story approach to organizational analysis. This implies that organizational life is perceived as polyphonic, equivocal, dialogical, unfinished and unresolved. We describe this approach as antenarrative inquiry in that it seeks to question established truths and moralities embedded in the narratives of the present. Antenarrative inquiry thus suspends beginnings, middles and ends in narratives and gives room for other voices. We propose Foucault’s power analysis, genealogy, as a method for antenarrative inquiry. We demonstrate the ideas of genealogy by relating it to Ricoeur’s work on narrative and time where experience is portrayed as a mimetic circle where endpoints lead back to pre-narration. We argue instead that organizational life is result of complex chains of interactions, negotiations and struggles. Genealogical scrutiny thus shakes up the mimetic circle and opens up for new interpretations of organizational life by revealing the power relations embedded in the conditions in which this life is storied and re-storied.

Metadata

Journal Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry 
Volume 8 
Issue 1 
Issue date 2009 
Type Article 
Language en
Pagination 32-47
ISSN 1532-5555