The Novel as Affective Site: Uncertain work as impasse in Wait Until Spring, Bandini
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In: Organization Studies, Vol. 40, No. 12, 01.12.2019, p. 1805-1822.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The Novel as Affective Site
T2 - Uncertain work as impasse in Wait Until Spring, Bandini
AU - Otto, Birke Dorothea
AU - Strauß, Anke
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2019.
PY - 2019/12/1
Y1 - 2019/12/1
N2 - In this paper we propose that reading and writing with novels contributes to the emerging field of researching affect in organization studies. Situating our argument in current research on work-related uncertainty, we take John Fante’s novel Wait Until Spring, Bandini as a ‘sensuous site’ of research to engage with the experience of feeling stuck – addressed as impasse, limbo or permanent temporariness – as a condition of contemporary work lives. While affect theoretical approaches often emphasize precognitive intensities and their transformative potential, the novel foregrounds how affective intensities stay and stick as they are entangled with powerful socio-political conventions, such as investments in the American Dream or the idea of stable employment. Such affective attachments take shape in antithetic dynamics of the not-so-static state of feeling stuck.
AB - In this paper we propose that reading and writing with novels contributes to the emerging field of researching affect in organization studies. Situating our argument in current research on work-related uncertainty, we take John Fante’s novel Wait Until Spring, Bandini as a ‘sensuous site’ of research to engage with the experience of feeling stuck – addressed as impasse, limbo or permanent temporariness – as a condition of contemporary work lives. While affect theoretical approaches often emphasize precognitive intensities and their transformative potential, the novel foregrounds how affective intensities stay and stick as they are entangled with powerful socio-political conventions, such as investments in the American Dream or the idea of stable employment. Such affective attachments take shape in antithetic dynamics of the not-so-static state of feeling stuck.
KW - affect
KW - Berlant
KW - crisis ordinary
KW - impasse
KW - novel
KW - sensuous site
KW - uncertain work
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074496434&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0170840619874463
DO - 10.1177/0170840619874463
M3 - Journal articles
AN - SCOPUS:85074496434
VL - 40
SP - 1805
EP - 1822
JO - Organization Studies
JF - Organization Studies
SN - 0170-8406
IS - 12
ER -