Duelling with dualisms: Descartes, Foucault and the history of organizational limits

Nick Butler,Stephen Dunne

doi:10.1177/1744935911427218

Abstract

Critical perspectives in organization studies often dismiss Descartes’ philosophical contribution because it is seen to legitimize a patriarchal and phallocentric mode of reasoning. In particular, the Cartesian mind–body dualism is said to reinforce gender inequality in organizations by privileging the rational mind over the emotional body. However, not only is this view incomplete and misleading, it also fails to consider the more significant division between reason and madness in Descartes’ work. For Foucault, Descartes’ Meditations plays a role in excluding madness from the domain of thought at the beginning of the classical age; this mirrors organizational practices of exclusion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, namely the incarceration of the mad in houses of confinement. This tells us that Descartes’ work has relevance for understanding the relation between philosophy and organizations in a specific historical context. In place of the historically de-contextualized use of philosophy we frequently find in organization studies, we propose that organizational scholars should seek to identify physical exclusions, conceptual binaries and historical breaks in order to conduct a critical ontology of the present – what we call a ‘history of organizational limits’.

Highlights

According to Žižek (2008: xxiii), a spectre is haunting Western academia: the spectre of the Cartesian subject
While post-Marxists consider the cogito to be indicative of capitalist individualism, feminists hold Descartes responsible for legitimizing gender inequality; and while cognitive scientists consider the unity of the Cartesian self to be illusory, environmentalists point out that Descartes’ distinction between mind and matter has sown the seeds of ecological catastrophe
The critical task for such a project would be to describe historical shifts in apparatuses of knowledge and power in order to unsettle the self-evidence that has developed around contemporary modes of organizational life. This is what we might call a ‘history of organizational limits’: in place of the historically de-contextualized use of philosophy we frequently find in organization studies, we propose that organizational scholars should seek to identify physical exclusions, conceptual binaries and historical breaks in order to conduct a critical ontology of the present

Summary

Introduction

According to Žižek (2008: xxiii), a spectre is haunting Western academia: the spectre of the Cartesian subject. This, Foucault contends, mirrors organizational practices of exclusion whereby those deemed to be mad were put under lock and key during the Great Confinement in the seventeenth and eighteenth century This approach suggests that it is the division between reason and madness in Descartes’ work, and not the dualism between mind and body, that has most relevance for studying organizations from a critical perspective. Descartes vows to believe that there is an evil genius who is able to deceive him all the time about everything, including the very existence of the external world, his own body, and the basic truths of mathematics and geometry; all that remains is Descartes’ ability to doubt, even if he is unable to know anything with certainty or indubitability At this point, at the end of the First Meditation, Descartes’ task appears to end in absolute scepticism: nothing whatsoever can be known for sure. The remainder of the paper will discuss Foucault’s treatment of the Meditations, focusing in particular on the binary division between reason and madness, before reflecting on its significance for developing a ‘history of organizational limits’

Foucault on Descartes

Conclusion