Is it all just melancholic pedagogy? Accelerationism and the future of critical management education

Abstract

This essay is a personal reflection on the double-bind that we as critical management studies academics feel we face in our pedagogic practice. We want to bring about more ethical and responsible management through teaching our students critiques of the excesses of capitalism, but we are all too aware of capitalism’s extraordinary resilience as a mode of social, political and economic organization. We know how its tendencies readily co-opt even the most ardent criticism into its own ever-mutating paradigm. We thus feel torn between wanting our students to think and act critically, and the fear that critique is simply a part of the process itself. Rather than calling for raising awareness, relationality and the creation of difference, we present an accelerationist provocation. We invite critical management studies educators to struggle with us through upsetting considerations – that perhaps the most effective tactics for resistance might be to encourage and exacerbate capitalism’s excesses. We conclude with a note on melancholy pedagogy and the powers of hopelessness.