Becoming self harm, theodicy and neo‐primitive organizing – necessary evil or evil of necessity?
journal contribution
posted on 2023-07-26, 12:54authored byLloyd Gray
The self has emerged as integral to how we comprehend the ethos of contemporary post‐bureaucratic – or what will be termed neo‐primitive – organizing. In juxtaposition, and immanent, are multiple requirements for the self to be harmed, in various ways, for the purposes of achieving organizational progress. This post‐structuralist composition explores how these requirements are inscribed, and desired, in different ways during ontotheological and neo‐primitive processes of sacrifice, neomasochism, simulacra, exclusion, and theodicy. These processes permit the possibility that the harming of the self can be justified (utility/include) and also discounted (diminish/exclude). It is argued, that relations of self and harm constantly arise, and change, during non‐integratable affects and events of radical alteration; namely where self questioning (loss of self) and questioning of self (identity) occur. However, it is argued, neo‐primitive organizing constantly refuses ethical responsiveness to self harm, through the inscriptive superimposition of exchange relations of lack, debt and guilt.