In the Critique of Cynical Reason, a great bestseller in Germany (Sloterdijk, 1983), Peter Sloterdijk puts forward the thesis that ideology’s dominant mode of functioning is cynical, which renders impossible—or, more precisely, vain—the classic critical-ideological procedure. The cynical subject is quite aware of the distance between the ideological mask and the social reality, but he none the less still insists upon the mask. The formula, as proposed by Sloterdijk, would then be: ‘they know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it’. Cynical reason is no longer naïve, but is a paradox of an enlightened false consciousness: one knows the falsehood very well, one is well aware of a particular interest hidden behind an ideological universality, but still one does not renounce it. http://www.autodidactproject.org/...
There is a specter haunting Millennials, the possibility of chaos in the streets and the need to think of a future - the commitment to a cause enough to travel to the site of conflict much like the foreign fighters for ISIL and the actual hope for a national identity. Is that attraction no less entrepreneurial in the
contemporary libertarian appeals in the global high-tech community the hacking of even national internet access as in the case of the recent DDoS attack on the DPRK or the similar attack on SONY's MMORPG platform. For committed anarchists rather than the certifiable, this does not represent the brand well and yet the capitalist business press finds new reasons to make a buck from the disorder. As supportive as one can be about the creative critique of
Adbusters, who buys a subscription? Does not one also legitimate the object of criticism and capitalism itself in its reproduction? As with all things it is about making trust a priority over reputation, often now the dynamic of street demonstrations when violence occurs.
As the media landscape looks increasingly diverse and anarchic, individuals, organisations and governments should not waste time wondering whether they have lost control of their reputations. The simple fact is that they have never had control. The question is what they can do about it now, and what they need to consider for the future. The fragmentation of media and the rise of social media has brought brand and personal reputational risk into sharp focus like never before. Disaffected shareholders, customers and staff are voicing their opinions to a global internet audience. In a brand context it is reputation anarchy. In Brand Anarchy, Steve Earl and Stephen Waddington draw on insight from opinion-makers and shapers such as Greg Dyke, Alastair Campbell, Seth Godin, David Cushman and Philip Sheldrake to explore how reputations can be better managed and the new challenges that the future of media may bring. They investigate the response from organisations that have faced recent attacks on their reputation such as BP, Research in Motion and Toyota, to discover what it teaches us about the future of reputation. This plain-speaking, shrewd book pulls no punches. It's a survival guide for anyone concerned what others think or say about them.
How many anarchists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
@-Insurrectionist: Smash the lightbulb with a hammer, shadows bring social war!
@-Communist: Smash the lightbulb with a hammer (and a sickle); everyone gets a shard. Except maybe everyone has to keep the light on.
@-Primitivist: Abolish lightbulbs, AND numbers! Campfires for the win.
@-Mutualist: However many an artisan workshop can send to a timebank.
@-Individualist: Don't tell me what I can and can't screw!
@-Collectivist: Something something lightbulb vouchers something something democratically determined salaries.
@-Syndicalist: A horizontal federation of trade unions' worth.
@-Capitalist: Worker screws lightbulb, owner screws worker. Also, pay me every time you see my light through the window, ya mooch.
@-Egoist: Just me.
@-Platformist: Whatever the most obsolete method is. Zing!
@-Feminist: No women were exploited in the screwing of this lightbulb.
@-Queer: I'd rather fuck a lightbulb than a cissexist homophobe.
@-Nihilist: Who needs lightbulbs when the whole world is burning?
@-Liberal: I want to "change" the lightbulb, because "screw" sounds a little too aggressive.
@-Hipster: "The light bulb was better before it changed." -Mypal Brokunin
@-Christian: These aren't the Light you're looking for.
@-Buddhist: The more the man screws the light, the more the light screws the man.<- deliberately ambiguous
what is so very wrong with this symbol
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How many anarchists does it take to start a conversation about anarchism in a business school? Perhaps the most appropriate punchline is that such a conversation shouldn’t ever take place at all, never mind the number of participants. And yet just that conversation did take place, in November 2010. In fact, the topic of anarchism almost naturally surfaces within discussions of forms of organising that escape the Procrustean bed of the day-to-day academic curriculum of business and management studies; at least it does if this special issue is anything to go by.
While the inclusion of anarchism and management in the same sentence would normally connote a rejection of one and a corresponding defence of the other, the study of management and radical social and political thought are not as antithetical as one might at first imagine. The field of critical management studies (CMS), regularly dated back to the publication of Mats Alvesson and Hugh Willmott’s collection (1992), has drawn on theoretical sources including the Frankfurt School, poststructuralism and various left-wing political traditions, as well as heterodox empirical research, in reflecting on and ultimately criticizing prevailing practices and discourses of management. As Gibson Burrell noted twenty years ago, there is a ‘growing number of alternative organisational forms now appearing, whether inspired by anarchism, syndicalism, the ecological movement, the co-operative movement, libertarian communism, self-help groups or, perhaps most importantly, by feminism’ (1992: 82). Despite anarchism appearing first in his list of inspirations for alternative organisation and having a history at least as old as Marxism and feminism, there has been relatively little research on anarchism and its principles within management studies. The core aims of this special issue are, firstly, to identify where the links between anarchism and CMS lie and, secondly, to provide a space for those working at these intersections to contribute towards bringing this new cross-over into existence. In many ways, one could say that this issue returns to Burrell’s comments made at the outset of CMS and tries to show where and how the claim about anarchism as an alternative organisational form influencing CMS can be taken seriously.
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