The Cinder and the Furrow on the Sand: Deconstructing Organizing for an Ethics of Survivance

Deconstruction has been a long-standing method used for analysing texts within the framework of a narratological tradition that underscores its discursive and linguistic nature. In contrast, we propose to understand deconstruction as a therapeutic endeavour for the ongoing revelation of repressed elements characterising organisational life, such as materiality, bodies, and Otherness. This perspective acknowledges the character of the trace as an archetypal model of textuality, a fusion of materiality and ideal that discourse analysis can only partially capture. In the organising realm, silence becomes a trace, alongside bodies, artefacts and the entirety of materiality. Viewing deconstruction as a therapeutic process also allows for exploring the repressed in terms of a différance which reveals existential interdependence. Through the process of deconstruction, we unveil the inherent and fundamental unity within differences and oppositions, thereby acknowledging our shared existence with the Other. Processing individual and collective suppressed elements inherent to organising thus lays the groundwork for an ethics of survivance finding its ideal momentum in the mortal encounter with the limits and finiteness of others.