Zizek-The Imposibility of the Open Socity

8/10/2019 Zizek-The Imposibility of the Open Socity

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Volume 14(6): 815836ISSN 13505084

Copyright 2007 SAGE(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi

and Singapore)

Liberalist Fantasies: iek andthe Impossibility of the Open Society

Christian De CockSchool of Business and Economics, Swansea University, Swansea, Wales, UK

Steffen BhmDepartment of Accounting, Finance and Management, University of Essex,Colchester, UK

Abstract. In this paper we engage with the liberalist project in organizationand management studies. The rst face of organizational liberalism isexpressed through post-bureaucratic discourses which very much denethe mainstream of management thought today, highlighting the need fororganizational openness which can only come through a liberation ofmanagement from the closed structures of the bureaucracy. The second face of organizational liberalism defends the bureaucratic ethos of liberal-democratic institutions and points to the Popperian concept of the opensociety that requires rational, procedural laws to reconcile conictingvalues in societies and organizations, thus ensuring the existence of a plurality of ways of life. We point to the limitations of both faces oforganizational liberalism by discussing key aspects of Slavoj iekswork. iek displaces the liberal conception of institutionally sanctionedopenness by claiming this actually constitutes a closure and puts achallenge to us. How can we create real openness? How is a real difference possible? Key words. bureaucracy; capitalism; ideology; liberalism; opensociety; political philosophy; iek

DOI: 10.1177/1350508407082264 http://org.sagepub.com


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iek and the Impossibility of the Open SocietyChristian de Cock and Steffen Bhm

nuanced and grounded view of the bureaucracy and the claims of the needto go beyond it (Courpasson and Reed, 2004). As bureaucratic forms of man-agement and organization come under ever more vicious attack, critics areinterested in studying the ideological content behind these attacks and

assessing the costs involved when exibility and networks take over from bureaucratic structures. Willmott (1993), for example, critically examinedthe management culture literature which emerged in the 1980s andshowed that behind the post-bureaucratic rhetoric of freedom, autonomyand self-organization lurk new forms of control, domination and surveil-lance (for futher examples see Courpasson, 2000; Knights and Willmott,2000; Reed, 1999).

One of the most consistent defences of the bureaucracy and critique ofpost-bureaucratic discourse has come from within what can be called lib-eralist organization studies. The most outspoken representative of this eld

of study is Paul du Gay (1994b, 2000b, 2003, 2004), who, over the course ofa decade, has published in the journal Organizationalone four papers thatexplicitly engage with the defence of bureaucratic forms of organizing andthe exposure of the limitations of post-bureaucratic managerial discourses.Other writers in this eld include Adler and Borys (1996), Armbrster(2003), Armbrster and Gebert (2002) and Gebert and Boerner (1999), allof whom have contributed to a project that aims to critique ideologies ofpost-bureaucratic management and defend a liberalist ethos of bureaucraticorganization.

In this paper we will engage with the liberalist tradition in OMS and out-

line its critique of post-bureaucratic discourses. We will, rstly, contextualizeour argument in the philosophical tradition of liberalism and point to thecontroversies within it. We will show that there are important differencesin the way different strands of liberalism conceptualize openness, and thesedifferences, we will argue, have an important political impact. We will thenapply these philosophical arguments to a review of liberalist OMS. Thesecond part of the paper will contain a critique of this literature throughthe work of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj iek. Liberalist organizationand management theorists argue that an open society can be maintained by establishing effective institutional structures that can rationally control

the excesses of contemporary neo-liberal capitalism. iek, in contrast,points to the impossibility of such a project and suggests that preciselythe liberalist discourse of an open society is essential for the continuedideological maintenance of a capitalist system that is fundamentally notopen but closed.

Liberalism and the Open SocietyLiberalist thought has a long and rich tradition that goes back to Enlighten-ment philosophers, such as, for example, Hobbes (1998), Kant (1998) and Mill

(1982). The philosophies of the Enlightenment provided the groundworkfor the political philosophies of Berlin (2002), Holmes (1995), Popper (1945)


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Organization 14(6)Articles

and Rawls (1996), who can be seen as the main proponents of liberalistthought in the post-war Anglo-Saxon tradition. It was particularly Popperstwo-volume workThe Open Society and its Enemies, published in Britainat the end of the Second World War, which has had an immense inuence

on political philosophy and popular political discourse.Popper, an Austrian who ed from German-occupied Vienna by emigrat-ing to New Zealand in the 1930s and later to England, passionately arguedthat the liberalist open society is the only effective defence against total-itarian ideologies. He saw German Nazism as the late rise of a magical, tribal,collectivist society that he called closed society (1945: 173). For Popper, aclosed society functions like an organism resembling a herd or tribe whosemembers are held together by semi-natural and biological ties, such as kin-ship. However, the event of reason and knowledge, Popper argues, rendersthe natural and organic community impossible and undesirable:

Our dream of heaven cannot be realized on earth. Once we begin to relyupon our reason, and to use our powers of criticism, once we feel the callof personal responsibilities, and with it, the responsibility of helping toadvance knowledge, we cannot return to a state of implicit submission totribal magic. For those who have eaten of the tree of knowledge, paradiseis lost. (1945: 200)

For Popper, reason and knowledge are the main distinguishing factors between humans and animals. For him, there is no return to a harmoniousstate of nature. If we turn back, then we must go the whole waywe mustreturn to the beasts (1945: 201). Our task therefore is not, in his view, tolook back to a harmonious, organic pastthe closed wholebut to embracethe power of openness, reason, and knowledge that lets us question andcriticize our being in the world.

Poppers open society promotes debate and a critical ethos that makes usreason about competing views and knowledges. Truth, in his view, is nota harmonious universal, but something that can only be achieved throughpiecemeal changes and a cooperative effort. His ideal of an open society ischaracterized by the need for individuals to make rational decisions abouttheir positions in the world (1945: 173). In his view, this inevitably leadsto a struggle between different groups, as some members of society try totake the place of others and try to advance socially (1945: 174). This makesnecessary strong democratic and legal institutions as well as personaldemocratic responsibility. The task of democratic institutions is thus tomake sure that every member of society is equal before the law. But this lawis not magic, that is, it is not pre-given by a higher, perhaps natural, order.Instead, the law is man-made, which means that in Poppers view we havea responsibility to construct good democratic laws. In contrast to Platosview, Popper argues that a democracy can only work if the individual isnot fully subsumed by the greater whole (1945: 100ff), as this would be astep towards a closed, totalitarian regime. Instead, for Popper, a democracyneeds to ensure the individual freedom of every member of society, whichmust also include the ability for individuals to critique the democratic


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system. Democratic critique, Popper maintains, is vital for the survival ofa democracy; and Socrates, who was a strong critic of Platos democraticRepublic in ancient Athens, needs to be regarded as the real democrat inPoppers view (1945: 189).

In a recent book Soros, the Hungarian-born philantropist-billionnaire,follows in Poppers footsteps by arguing that the open society has thegreat merit of assuring freedom of thought and speech giving ample scopeto experimentation and creativity (2000: 3). In his view, global societyshould be organized according to the principles of the open society ensur-ing the effective defence against ideologieswhose universal truth wouldconstitute a threat to the open society (2000: xxi) and the smooth runningof a liberal-democratic consensus. Indeed, Soros suggests that the UnitedStates, the European Union, and many other parts of the world come veryclose to qualifying as open societies (2000: 117). Furthermore for Soros, the

concepts of open society and market economy are closely linked, and globalcapitalism has brought us close to a global open society (2000: xxiv).But Soros is not a blind promoter of the Western dual system of dem-

ocracy and market capitalism. He is indeed able to see its shortcomings. Yet, because the ideal open society holds itself open to change and improvement(2000: 21), Soros is a rm believer in the ability of democratic capitalism toconstantly improve itself. Therefore, there is no need to abolish capitalism;rather, we should endeavour to correct its shortcomings (2000: xxiv). Heargues, for example, that if we can correct the disparity between economicand political organization of the world, recognize the errors of market

fundamentalism, and create the rules and institutions that are necessaryfor the coexistence of the plethora of individuals and the multiplicity ofcommunities that make up a global society (2000: 129), we will be able toactualize the open society. This sits well next to Poppers (1945: 113) callfor the need of effective institutions that can socially engineer society andprotect it from its enemies. These institutions should not only work onnational levels, but they should also be able to set up control mechanismsat the international level.

Poppers and Soros liberalist ideas on the open society, however, havenot compared well with the recent American political agenda of thepost 9/11 era. In his recent bookThe Bubble of American Supremacy (2004)Soros attacks what has been called the neo-conservativism of the Bushadministration, which aims to promote democracy, freedom, capitalism andliberal values around the globe in an aggressive manner. This feud betweenpromoters of the open society and neo-conservatives goes back to the1950s and 1960s when Poppers thoughts were vehemently opposed byLeo Strauss, a German-Jewish philosopher who emigrated to the UnitedStates in the 1930s.

Strauss philosophy (e.g. 1959, 1989)although within the traditionof liberalismargues against, what he calls, the relativism of the opensociety concept, whose consistent denial of the common good requires aradical individualism (Strauss, 1989: 14950). According to Strauss, this


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individualism denies any substantive public interest because in an opensociety no minority, however, small, no individual, however perverse,must be left out, as the public administration, or the new political science,as he calls it, aims to judge in a universally valid, or objective as well as

value-free manner of what is to the interest of each (Strauss, 1989: 150). Inthis way the public administration is supposed to be a mere spectatoritspurpose is to be neutral in the conict between liberal democracy andits enemies; a non-ideological regime (Strauss, 1989: 152). No wonderthen that the new political science has nothing to say against those whounhesitatingly prefer surrender, that is the abandonment of liberal dem-ocracy, to war (Strauss, 1989: 155). Strauss argues passionately against sucha surrender. For him, there is a need for an enlightened elite that wouldpromote and defend the liberal standards of democracy: Education toperfect gentlemanship, to human excellence, liberal education consists in

reminding oneself of human excellence, of human greatness (Strauss, 1989:316). Strauss thinks that the value-free administration of liberal democracy( la Popper and Soros) is not only not possible, but dangerous. For him,liberal democracy must be putting forward strong values and virtues thataspire to what he calls human greatness.

Some commentators, such as Drury (1999), have recently pointed tothe close links between the policies promoted by the neo-conservativeAmerican Right and Strauss philosophies. For example, Wolfowitz andShulsky, two important representatives of the Bush administration, werestudents of Strauss at the University of Chicago. According to Drury (1999),

there are three key aspects to Strauss philosophy that have been pickedup by neo-conservative politicians: deception, the power of religion, andaggressive nationalism. These Straussian principles of democratic politicspoint to the need for the masses to be subjected to strong leadershipreligious, ideological, nationalistic or otherwisethat can glue togethervarious social actors. The Bush administration has made extensive use ofthese principles, as it has been promoting neo-liberalism and aggressiveforeign policies around the world (Lobe, 2003).

For Harvey the drift towards neo-conservativism is a response tothe inherent instability of the neoliberal state (2005: 82). While neo-

conservatives agree with neo-liberals about the need to maintain thefreedom of markets and reduce the power of state administration, neo-conservative thought sees great dangers in the pluralist, relativist, andindividualist outcomes of neo-liberal disorganizations of society. There-fore, it is concerned to reinstate a certain order as an answer to thechaos of individual interests and actively put forward an overweeningmorality as the necessary social glue to keep the body secure in the faceof external and internal dangers (Harvey, 2005: 82). The war on terroris arguably such a social glue that hopes to provide a new moral purposefor those societies whose social mechanisms have often been substantially

disorganized by neo-liberal doctrines of privatization, market liberalizationand individualism.


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What the struggle between Strauss-inspired politics and the Popperianpromotion of the open society shows is that liberalism is indeed a projectthat has produced a variety of different theoretical and political interpret-ations. This is the key argument made in Grays (2000)Two Faces of

Liberalism. Although there is not enough space to engage with this bookin any detail here, it is useful for us at this stage to point to Grays two com-peting faces of liberalism. The rst face is based on the assumption thatliberalism is a system of universal principles. In this view liberalism is apolitical doctrine that promotes liberal values as if they were universallyauthoritative (Gray, 2000: 33). Although Gray does not explicitly explorethis, one could argue that this rst face of liberalism can be linked to thethought of Strauss and its pro-active application by the Bush adminis-tration that aims to promote values of democracy and freedom as well asneo-liberal economic policies around the globe, if necessary by force. As

discussed earlier, for Strauss, liberalism needs to be injected with a strongmoral purpose and leadership that can protect society from the follies ofliberal relativism and individualism. Here, liberalism is a prescription,universal in authority and application, for an ideal regime (Gray, 2000: 69),which assumes a certain induced consensus on what a liberalist socialorganization should look like.

In contrast, the second face, which Gray callsmodus vivendi , pursuesthe coexistence of different ways of life and aims at reconciling the claimsof conicting values (Gray, 2000: 33). Poppers and Soros ideas on theopen society are more easily recognizable in Grays second face ofmodus

vivendi liberalism, as both emphasize the need for a constant reform of theinstitutions of liberal democracy. In contrast to the universal conceptionsof neo-conservative liberalism, which aims to put forward a leading value ofa liberalist organization of society,modus vivendiliberalism assumes theexistence of incommensurable and conicting values in society, whichcannot be reconciled by way of a single solution:modus vivendi can nolonger be identied with particular values (Gray, 2000: 138). That is, it doesnot aim to promote one way of life around the world; instead,modus vivendihopes to ensure the co-existence of many ways of life (Gray, 2000: 139).

Two Faces of Organizational LiberalismPoppers work, although very inuential in the wider spheres of the socialsciences, has had comparatively little exposure in organization and manage-ment theory in the past decade. Recently, however, Armbrster and Gebert(2002) have produced a thoughtful paper on Popper, using his politicalphilosophies to critique a range of currently popular anti-bureaucratic andcollectivist forms of work organization. They show that Poppers thoughtcan be productively used to point to some shortcomings and dangers of,for example, the enterprise and excellence literatures, which offer a range

of new post-bureaucratic management techniques that are said to be moresuitable for todays challenging times characterized by complexity and


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traditional management. In this way, Peters has done for management whatthe neo-conservatives have done for politics.

What is important to realize is that Peters is not simply a managementguru who aims at increasing efciency, creativity and prot levels in private

companies. As du Gay shows throughout his work (e.g. 2000a: 81ff), the man-agerial, anti-bureaucratic, spirit has also taken hold in the public sector.In times of global competitiveness between nations the bureaucratic state isoften seen as something that hinders economic activity within and betweennational economies. What is generally understood as neo-liberalismalsoreferred to as market liberalismadvocates the view that there is no alter-native to the discourse of management and the capitalist market, which issaid to have proven to be an efcient and effective way of organizing econ-omic activity. Du Gay discusses, for example, a range of attempts to managepublic service organizations more like entrepreneurial corporations, which

are characterized by at hierarchies, teamwork, internal markets and self-responsibility. This entrepreneurialism is supposed to make public servicesmore agile and cost the taxpayer less money to run. However, not only arepublic services run as if they are companies; increasingly they are also runfor prot. The 1980s and 1990s saw immense privatization programmes,and today even state schools and hospitals are operated by companies thatare not only interested in delivering a good public service but also in theirprot levels (Monbiot, 2001). This has been both a national phenomenonand a global one. As many critics of globalization show (e.g. Frank, 2001;Hertz, 2001; Klein, 2001), neo-liberal policies now set the agenda in many

parts of worldoften enforced by the International Monetary Fund, theWorld Bank and other non-governmental organizations controlled byWestern governments and business interests.

The response by du Gay (2000a) and other organizational liberalists(e.g. Adler and Borys, 1996; Armbrster, 2002, 2003; Armbrster andGebert, 2002) to the attacks on bureaucracy by anti-bureaucratic manage-ment writers and neo-liberals is one that stresses the need for a return tothe bureaucratic ethos. Organizational liberalists emphasize the needto organize democratic society through bureaucratic institutions. AsArmbrster writes, from a liberalist viewpoint, there are no means other

than institutional ones for securing plurality (2003: 23), that is, freedomand democracy. Organizational liberalists believe in the plurality of lifeforms which are governed by contingent political and ethical rules. Onthe one hand, the bureau is seen as one of these life forms itself; followingWeber, du Gay, for example, asserts that the bureau must be seen as aninstitution that is guided by its own moral conduct (2000a: 5, 10). On theother hand, the bureau is also seen to ensure the plurality of differentlife forms in society at large. The bureaucrat is characterized as someonewho has a strict adherence to procedure, commitment to the purpose ofthe ofce, abnegation of personal moral enthusiasms, [and] acceptance of

sub- and super-ordination (du Gay, 2000a: 44). The bureaucrat is thoughtto be someone who can make impartial and impersonal decisions by way


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and political phenomena and forms of popular culture. Ansell-Pearson(2004: 37) insightfully remarked that ieks superior intellectual tourismhas become his calling card. He mobilizes an unsurpassed plethora of com-ments on cultural artefacts (e.g. the different styles of European toilets), lms

(e.g. Hitchcock, Lynch), and popular jokes (he has a good line in sardonicEastern European humour) and displays the talent of the trueraconteur ,continuously pulling against the reins of professional prudence. iekswriting output has been quite astonishing: over the period 19992004 hemanaged to publish 13 books, thus leading to admonishments that he is atrisk of writing faster than he can read, and at times faster even than he canthink (Kay, 2003: 3). Indeed, his engagements with other thinkers haveoften been far from careful, tending to rely on secondary commentaries(see Ansell-Pearson, 2004 on ieks encounter with Deleuze; Gilbert,2001 on ieks claims about Derridas work). Whilst he may be ratherundisciplined as a philosopher, the critics all agree that iek is capableof producing a set of readings that pose profound challenges to the oftenundemanding stories we tell ourselves about knowledge and life. iek isundoubtedly at his best when in his trademark move he neatly turns notionsand situations on their head. He thus refuses to accept, for example, the fartoo cosy notion of open society which he equates with intellectual andpolitical deadlockclosure in other words.

In contrast to Poppers and Soros understanding of the open societyas being explicitly guided by the need to go beyond ideological regimes,ieks theoretical project is inherently linked to the claim that any formof social organization involves the question of ideology and fantasy. iek bases this claim on a particular understanding of the LacanianRSI triad,tracing the relationship between the orders of theReal, the Symbolic andthe I maginary (see Lacan, 1977, 1998). For Lacan the symbolic is an entitywhich pre-exists us, and into which we are born, learning and abiding byits rules (Nicol, 2001). One of the most fundamental insights iek takesfrom Lacan is the idea that the symbolic is always incomplete and both con-stituted and subverted by the Real, which shows up negatively as the outerlimit of our discourse, the point at which our representations crumbleand fail. The Real is thus not some kind of raw nature which is then sym- bolized. Rather it persists as that failure or inconsistency of reality whichhas to be lled with appearance and fantasy. It follows that fantasy is notthe opposite of reality; fantasy is on the side of reality in that it sustains thesubjects sense of reality (Eagleton, 2001). Here iek (with Lacan) reassertsFreuds fundamental insight that we, as human subjects, are not at homein this world, and that there always exists a certain lack in the subjectsreality (iek, 2003). But what exactly is this lack? It is jouissance, whichcould be translated as enjoyment, but it is not simply pleasure. Pleasureis produced by the symbolic order, the Other. Jouissance is beyond soci-

ally sanctioned pleasure; it is a basic compulsion to enjoy; to achieveconsummate satisfaction and thereby heal the gap, or wound in the


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order of being (iek and Daly, 2004: 3). Jouissance is therefore never fullyattainable, it can never be assumed or incorporated into the Other andresists naming; it is structured in a fundamental fantasy.

For iek, the human subject can only ever plug its lack with fantasy

after fantasy. This lack also points to the openness of social relations. Thisopenness is, however, not comparable to Soros or Poppers conception of theopen society, nor comparable to the dreams of organizational liberalists. Infact one could argue that ieks notion of openness points to the lack of theopen society that is commonly celebrated today: jouissance is structuredand domesticated (with)in the fundamental fantasy of a harmonious worldthat can ultimately be constructed by means of establishing proper liberaldemocratic and capitalist social relationsour way of life.

iek is not one of those academics who just rant against Western liberaldemocracy and capitalism from the distance of their armchairs. iek has

been politically active in his home country of Slovenia. He nished fthin the 1990 presidential elections and supported the liberal-democraticparty (Harpham, 2003). Whilst such a move tted in with his early writingsagainst totalitarianism from a position that was, at least in outline, liberal;in his most recent writings he has become an increasingly virulent criticof liberal democracy which he sees as utterly intertwined with capitalism.For iek, the liberal appeal to freedom and democracy, the belief thatthis will save us from the abuses of capitalism, has to be challenged. As anold-fashioned left winger (2002c: 39), iek stresses that his understandingof the open society is quite different from Soros: the Soros people have

this ethic of the bad state versus good civic, independent structures. Butsorry, in Slovenia I am for the state and against civil society! In Slovenia,civil society is equal to the right-wingers (2002c: 39). iek rejects theapparent multi-cultural, neutral, liberal attitude of a Soros-approach toopenness, which only sees nationalistic madness around itself and positsitself in a witness role (2002c: 41). Figures such as Soros, he claims intypically amboyant style, are ideologically much more dangerous thancrude direct market proteers; and he even goes as far as calling him ethic-ally repulsive (iek, 2004b: 152). A more sober assessment would be thatSoros approach to the open society too often tries to exclude the difcult

questions, the proper political antagonisms, by referring to an abstractnotion of liberal democracy.Here we nd iek in full agreement with Laclau and Mouffes (1985)

notion that society does not exist: that there is no neutral space, noneutral reality that can be rst objectively described and from which wethen develop the idea of antagonism. Again, this would be my idea offantasy as constituting reality (iek and Daly, 2004: 78). Indeed, iek,whilst admitting to some political and theoretical misunderstandings between Ernesto Laclau and myself, generously acknowledges Laclausfundamental insights into the key issues of antagonism, hegemony,

empty signier (iek and Daly, 2004: 41). For iek, freedom is alwaysfreedom for a particular group to do a particular thing; which means that


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freedom is necessarily located within the context of political struggle(iek, 2002a). Consequently he views society as a locus ofantagonistic struggle. Let us remember: Popper also saw his open society as a placeof struggle between groups. The key difference between Popper and iek,

however, is that for iek there can never be a rational/post-ideologicalmediation between competing factions of society. Freedom cannot, asorganizational liberalists maintain, be secured by an institutional order ofliberal-democracy bureaucratically superimposed on the public sphere.iek is close to Mouffes recent writings1 here in positing the publicsphere as the battleground where different hegemonic projects confrontone another without any possibility of nal reconciliation; yet he is at best sceptical about Mouffes notion of agonistic democracy. The lengthypassage from a recent book is important enough to be quoted in full:

Democracy is not merely the power of, by, and for the people. It is notenough just to claim that, in a democracy, the will and interests (the two donot in any way automatically coincide) of the large majority determine thestates decisions. Democracyin the way this term is used todayconcerns,above all, formal legalism: its minimal denition is the unconditional ad-herence to a certain set of formal rules which guarantee that antagonismsare fully absorbed into the agonistic game Those who are old enough stillremember the dull attempts of democratic socialists to oppose the visionof authentic socialism to miserable really existing socialismto such anattempt, the standard Hegelian answer is quite adequate: the failure of realityto live up to its notion always bears witness to the inherent weakness of thisnotion itself. But why should the same not hold also for democracy itself?Is it also not all too simple to oppose to really existing liberal capitalistdemocracy a more true radical democracy? (iek, 2004b: 114115)

What we lose in entering Mouffes agonistic game (where opponents seethemselves as sharing a common symbolic space within which theconict takes placeMouffe, 2005: 805) is precisely the possibility of thecreation of an alternative symbolic space.

Whilst liberalist approaches are geared towards demystifying ideologyin order to achieve some kind of greater awareness which can contribute tosocial change, so deeply rooted in the psychic structure is ieks idea ofideology that there can be no change based on logical analysis. The ideaof the subject who can be integrated into the socio-symbolic order withoutremainder equates to ideology at its purest. Indeed, iek relentlesslyidenties the enjoyment specic to the sense of duty, the illicit graticationourishing on the underside of adherence to procedural laws (Harpham,2003). Thus, the call by organizational liberalists for recovering an original bureaucratic ethos is insufcient. Whilst defending the role an institutionalsetup plays for the democratic governing of society can be a worthwhileprojectparticularly in relation to the popular anti-bureaucratic discoursesin OMSsuch attempts fail to evaluate the particular ends bureaucraticinstitutions can be put to. Is it not our task to analyse the hegemonic andideological content of the relationship between the state bureaucracy and


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the economic forces of capitalism? Ideology works precisely because ittaps into the concealed realm of fantasy that underlies and conditions thecontents we ascribe to language and that prevents us from challengingideological representations. Effective critical interventions therefore must

be made with an eye to traversing the fantasya term iek borrows fromLacanian therapyas opposed to engaging only in rational-deliberativepolitical argument which is sustained by social fantasies. Liberty anddemocracy, the signiers that are of such vital importance for the Westernliberal-democratic project in all of its guises, are effectively fantasies thatsustain the hegemony of the global capitalist system: You are free to doanything, as long as it involves shopping, or, you are free to expresswhatever political views, as long as it involves voting. Equally, the liberalideal of the open society might well be able to cater democratically for awhole host of competing values, but in the end a democratic bureaucracy

will always apply a type of rationality that has been institutionalizedand legitimated by hegemonic social forces.2 For iek, openness meansquestioning the ideological workings of the allegedly post-ideologicaldiscourse of the open society. Once we accept the social democratic ideaof the modern capitalist market economy cum welfare state it is easy toclaim that one should avoid both extremes (total freedom of the marketand excessive state intervention). However, true openness would consistin transforming the very overall balance of the social edice, enforcing anew structural principle of social life that would render the very eld ofthe opposition between market and state obsolete (iek, 2004a: 73). As

such we should resist what iek calls the ultimate liberal blackmailcontained in the argument that any alternative to capitalism merely pavesthe way for totalitarianism.

The rst task therefore is preciselynot to succumb to the temptationto offer clear alternatives to change things with reference to commonlyaccepted discourses (which then inevitably end in a cul-de-sacof debilit-ating impossibility: What can we do against global capital?). A iekianreading of popular management discourse would by denition be unreason-able; it would fully assume the tenets of the discourse and push these tothe point of their absurdity: what if we really took serious Tom Peters

or Michael Hammers exhortations of breaking all the rules or startingagain with a blank sheet of paper? Whilst iek does not carry out sucha reading on management texts, he does perform, for example, a brilliantand most entertaining short-circuit on the idea of Christianity, which hepresses into service as an argumentagainst faith in spiritual reality, andin favour of a dialectical materialism (iek, 2001). As Kay (2003: 125)puts it: The Church of England would indeed be amazed to learn that thetrue purpose of its teaching was to enable the underclass to band togetherfor therapy and revolution. In the context of OMS, ODohertys (2004)excessively literal (and hence deeply subversive) review of theFinancial

Times Handbook of Management would be a recent example of a readingwhich aims at traversing the fantasy.


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However valuable and amusing such readings may seem, they also pointto the impossibility of fully conceptualizing radical political change. Whatwill emerge when traversing the fantasy cannot be predicted in advance.Thus, ieks theoretical aim is ultimately a negative one: he does not pre-

sent a concrete vision of what a new socio-economic order would look like.Yet, by not offering us a traditional utopian picture of what things would be like after the break, he forces us to think the break itself. As such he pro-vides a utopian form which is an answer to the liberal ideological convictionthat there can be no alternative to the capitalist system. In fact, the demandto establish positive criteria of the desirable society is fundamental toliberal political theory from Locke to Rawls (Jameson, 2005) but is aliento Marxism (Calvino, 1987).

iek, the Great Utopian? (Or How to Rescue Openness)One should have the courage to afrm that, in a situation like todays, theonly way really to remain open to a revolutionary opportunity is to renouncefacile calls to direct action, which necessarily involve us in an activity wherethings change so that the totality remains the same. (iek, 2004b: 72)

It should be clear from the previous section that iek has not only liberal-ism in his sights. For iek, the contemporary fashion of wanting to createcontinuous micro-political movement guarantees that nothing will change,and only the full acceptance of the desperate closure of the present globalsituation can push us towards actual change. Succumbing to the urge ofdoing something, attempts at building small-scale, local, micro-politicalalternatives, will only contribute to the reproduction of the existing order.Not surprisingly, iek has come under re from the left in recent years.Robinson and Tormey (2004) argue that ieks uncompromizing language,offering a stark all or nothing choice, precludes any productive engagementin empirical debates. Laclau and Butler (Butler et al., 2000) chastise himfor a lack of rigorous analysis of the social contingencies of capitalism andleft politics, and in a recent book Ernesto Laclau (2005) mischievously askswhether iek, by dismissing all partial struggles, is perhaps anticipatingthe invasion of beings from another planet who will save us. Yet, to clarifyhis position: iek is not against political activity per se (his own actionsprove otherwise)it is just that he believes that traditional political activity(e.g. institutionalized politics within the democratic-parliamentary order)simply does not contain the capacity for radical change (iek, 2003).

iek is also very much at odds with contemporary currents in OMSwhich seem to be moving in cautious directions. As Parker (2002: 217)suggests:

Whether in the realms of theoretical abstraction or grant-driven policyapplication, the commonality is a withdrawal from vainglorious claims

to be able to change the world. Hubris has had its nemesis, and we liveafter utopia.


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For iek politics proper always involves a kind of short circuit betweenthe universal and the particular; it involves the paradox of a singular thatappears as a stand-in for the universal, destabilizing the natural func-tional order of relations in the social body. Thus, we should not see the

universal (e.g. the non-exploitative, the egalitarian) in terms of an a-contextual absolute, but rather as a culturally specic absolute (manifestedas exceptionthe bone-in-the-throatto the dominant form of the day):

The position of universality is not simply one which oats above differences,mediating or encompassing them all, but the position of knowing how totraverse the eld with an additional, more radical difference, a differencewhich cuts each particular part from within. (iek 2004b: 89)

The way to effect change therefore is to seize on this exception, or on therandom, contingent factor in the current scheme of things, and force itsuniversal implications so as to produce a new historical order. iekspoint of reference here is the old Left tradition of the Day; the break thatinaugurates the new; the radical act we often, for want of a better term,call revolution, (the moment when, briey, there is an opening for anactto intervene into a situation). Thisact , a key iekian concept, cannot ever be reduced to an outcome of objective conditions. The very disturbingimplication of ieks act from the point of view of political change liesprecisely in its radical openness. The act proper is radically unaccountable;one can never fully foresee its consequences, in particular the way it willtransform the existing symbolic space. It is a sudden collective movementthat can never be predicted in advance, that strikes the least likely placeand the least likely collective agents or actors (Jameson, 2005). ieksconcept of the act is thus incompatible with political calculation and liber-alist administration.3 In a truly radical political act the opposition betweena crazy, destructive gesture and a strategic political decision momentarily breaks down. Only later, in a subsequent move, can the act be properly pol-iticized. He imagines some form of gratication inherent in the very con-frontation with pessimism and the impossible:

In a genuine revolutionary breakthrough, the utopian future is neithersimply fully realized, present, nor simply evoked as distant promise

which justies present violenceit is rather as if, in a unique suspensionof temporality, in the short circuit between the present and the future, weareas if by Gracebriey allowed to actas if the utopian future is (not yetfully here, but) already at hand, there to be seized. Revolution is experiencednot as a present hardship we have to endure for the sake of the happinessand freedom of future generations, but as the present hardship over whichthis future happiness and freedom already cast their shadowin it, we arealready free even as we ght for freedom Revolution is its own ontological proof , an immediate index of its own truth. (iek, 2002a: 259260)

The act combines voluntarism, an active attitude of taking risks, with a morefundamental fatalism: one acts, makes a leap, and then one hopes thatthings will turn out all right (iek, 2002b: 81). The search for a guarantee


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is simply an expression of fear before the abyss. iek thus tackles head-on the fundamental anxiety which underpins what he calls the liberal blackmail: the fear of losing ones familiar world in exchange for a world inwhich all known things and experiencespositive as well as negativewill

have been obliterated.In summary, for iek our passage through the fundamental fantasy ofcapitalism and liberal democracy will require the spontaneous and violent birth of new models of socio-political arrangement, just as the spontan-eous formation of the Paris commune can be seen as a model for Marxscommunism. The demands emanating from these new socio-politicalarrangements, if they are to make a true difference, have to be by denitionunreasonable, impossible even, which stands in stark contrast to theconstant reference by organizational liberalists for the open society to be based on reason, with any excessive interventions immediately denounced

as leading to totalitarianism. Whilst not referring directly to him, Jamesonsdescription of Utopia uncannily describes ieks challenge of opennessand as such serves as our postscript:

Utopia thus now better expresses our relationship to a genuinely politicalfuture than any current program of action, where we are for the momentonly at the stage of massive protests and demonstrations, without anyconception of how a globalized transformation might then proceed Theformal awhow to articulate the Utopian break in such a way that it istransformed into a practical-political transitionnow becomes a rhetoricaland political strength in that it forces us precisely to concentrate on the breakitself: a meditation on the impossible, on the unrealizable in its own right.This is very far from a liberal capitulation to the necessity of capitalism,however; it is quite the opposite, a rattling of the bars and an intense spiritualconcentration and preparation for another stage which has not yet arrived.(Jameson, 2005: 233)

Notes1 Mouffes key criticism of the present model of Western liberal democracy is that

it is based on consensus and underpinned by the universal value of the freemarket. She proposes the notion of agonistic democracy which allows for a

plurality of democratic positions, with liberal ideology being just one of thosedemocratic positions: Contrary to the various liberal models the agonisticapproach never forgets that the terrain in which hegemonic interventionstake place is always the outcome of previous hegemonic practices and never aneutral one. This is why it denies the possibility of non-adversarial democraticpolitics and criticizes those who, by ignoring the dimension of the political,reduce politics to a set of supposedly technical moves and neutral procedures(Mouffe, 2005: 806). The political is precisely liberalisms blind spot becauseby bringing to the fore the inescapable moment of decision (in the strong senseof having to decide in an undecidable terrain), what antagonism reveals is thevery limit of any rational consensus (Mouffe, 2005: 804).

2 Judith Butler (2006: 12) provides a revealing current example of how thedemocratic ideal has been usurped by neo-conservative forces in American


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academia, thus leading to explicit calls for increased surveillance of facultyviewpoints and activities as they might be considered corrosive of democracy:Academic freedom is linked directly to the ideal of a democracy in which a balance of opinions is desired and regulated The new legislative initiativesproposed by David Horowitz dene democratic ideals restrictively in order toemphasize not only the need for balanced viewpoints, but the power of statelegislatures to regulate and enforce that balance.

3 Note that for iek, An authentic political act can be, in terms of its form, ademocratic one as well as a non-democratic one (iek 2004b: 87).

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Christian De Cock is Professor of Organization Studies at the School of Business andEconomics at Swansea University. He is Director of the full-time MBA programmeand Head of the Human Resources, Organizations and Entrepreneurshipgroup.He received his MSc and PhD from the Manchester Business School. Christianhas a long-standing interest in the role of the arts, literature and philosophy inmanagement theory and management development.Address: School of Businessand Economics, Swansea University, Haldane Building, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK.[email: [email protected]]

Steffen Bhm is Lecturer in Management at the Department of Accounting, Financeand Management, University of Essex. He is a member of the editorial collective ofthe journal Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization (www.ephemeraweb.org) and founding co-editor of the new publishing pressMayybooks(www.mayybooks.org). His book,Repositioning Organization Theory: Impossibilitiesand Strategies (Palgrave), reads a range of critical and post-structural philosophiesin order to critique the political positioning of the eld of organization andmanagement theory. He has also co-editedAgainst Automobility , published byBlackwell in 2006. Address: Department of Accounting, Finance and Manage-ment, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, CO4 3SQ, UK.[email: [email protected]]

Zizek-The Imposibility of the Open Socity

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