TY - JOUR

T1 - Strangely Familiar

T2 - The Uncanny and Unsiting Organizational Analysis

AU - Beyes, Timon

AU - Steyaert, Chris

PY - 2013/10

Y1 - 2013/10

N2 - This paper focuses on the aesthetics of the uncanny to inquire into and perform affective sites of organizingthat are imbued with feelings of uncertainty and uneasiness. We argue that the uncanny forms an ‘unconcept’that allows us to think and apprehend ‘white spaces’ of organization not as new or other spaces but througha process of relating intensively with the conventional places, streets and squares that form the backdrop toeveryday life. We also make use of the notion of ‘unsiting’ to show how organizational research is able toenhance our appreciation of the aesthetic dimension of organization in ways that expose and undermine thatwhich has become familiar and taken-for-granted. Based on an artistic intervention by the theatre collectiveRimini Protokoll, we encounter and analyse such processes of unsiting through the affective and spatialdoublings at work in the organization of urban space. Theorizing the organizational uncanny opens up newsites/sights in organization by forging an interconnection of the recent affective, spatial and aesthetic ‘turns’in organizational theory. To do this demands what we call scholarly performances that involve the witnessingand enacting of everyday sites of organizing.

AB - This paper focuses on the aesthetics of the uncanny to inquire into and perform affective sites of organizingthat are imbued with feelings of uncertainty and uneasiness. We argue that the uncanny forms an ‘unconcept’that allows us to think and apprehend ‘white spaces’ of organization not as new or other spaces but througha process of relating intensively with the conventional places, streets and squares that form the backdrop toeveryday life. We also make use of the notion of ‘unsiting’ to show how organizational research is able toenhance our appreciation of the aesthetic dimension of organization in ways that expose and undermine thatwhich has become familiar and taken-for-granted. Based on an artistic intervention by the theatre collectiveRimini Protokoll, we encounter and analyse such processes of unsiting through the affective and spatialdoublings at work in the organization of urban space. Theorizing the organizational uncanny opens up newsites/sights in organization by forging an interconnection of the recent affective, spatial and aesthetic ‘turns’in organizational theory. To do this demands what we call scholarly performances that involve the witnessingand enacting of everyday sites of organizing.

KW - Digital media

KW - aesthetics

KW - Politics

KW - Psychology

KW - white space

KW - Rimini Protokoll

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84884889651&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/0170840613495323

DO - 10.1177/0170840613495323

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 34

SP - 1445

EP - 1465

JO - Organization Studies

JF - Organization Studies

SN - 0170-8406

IS - 10

ER -