Uncanny organization and the immanence of crisis

In this talk I use the psychoanalytic concept of the uncanny to develop a new perspective on crisis, one that challenges its associations with turning points and opportunities. The discussion identifies the immanence of crisis in organizational life. Engaging with the work of the philosopher Julia Kristeva, the uncanny is explored as an integral part of our subjectivities, one which disrupts our social stabilities and patterns of organizing. The concept of the uncanny also lets us apprehend the haunted and burdensome aspects of organizational life and the significance of the action in the shadows, atmospheres, and margins of organizations. Examining crisis through the lens of the uncanny brings to the fore the elusive and affective aspects of socio-political and organizational life. This perspective draws us away from an understanding of crisis as a passing phenomenon or as an opening that can be instrumentalized for cunning managerial purposes. Instead, it suggests the more radical insight that crisis is a condition of organizing.