Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

by David M. Boje, Ph.D. (September 3, 2001) - MAIN Site Fathers and Mother of Management

Intro - Socioeconomic Analysis of Management (SEAM) has a project at NMSU where I work, to apply Deleuze and Guattari's psychoanalytic theory to economics and the social performance aspects of managing and organizing. SEAM, upper leaf or head to the structure leaf at left and see psychoanalytic-SEAM. See SEAM.   You will need some vocabulary to get you started.

VOCABULARY

Body-without-Organs (BwO) "The BwO is that glacial reality where the alluvions, sedimentations, coagulations, foldings, and recoiling that compose the organism- and also a signification and subject- occur" (A Thousand Plateaus, 159). What corporation is not trying to get rid of all of its organs, and become a virtual corporate entity, only a head where executives play without organs.

Faciality -  The faciality of a corporation is a white wall, a black hole, and lines of flight. The corporate faciality is a text, that can be read.

"Significance is never without a white wall upon which it inscribes its signs and redundancies. Subjectification is never without a black hole in which it lodges its consciousness, passion, and redundancies." (A Thousand Plateaus, 167). 

Applied to Nike (Boje 1, Boje, D. M. (2000d) "Faciality of Nike Corporation." Working Paper. September 16th.  http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/nike/nike_pages/faciality_theory_nike.html; Faciality theory 1, 2 Todd, Hawk 3,

Rhizome - "A rhizome as a subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes. Plants with roots or radicles may be rhizomorphic in other respects altogether. Burrows are too, in all their functions of shelter, supply, movement, evasion, and breakout. The rhizome itself assumes very diverse forms, from ramified surface extension in all directions to concretion into bulbs and tubers ... The rhizome includes the best and the worst: potato and couchgrass, or the weed." (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 6- 7) - For more on Rhizome with pictures, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (paper), 7 (short paper).

Territorialization (deterritorialization and reterritorialization) - these are the three moments of Nomadology.

"Territorialization has to happen within a capitalist economy, which produces
anti-production, or excess that must be reterritorialized back into the economy. The economy is a territorializing machine, so deterritorialization is absolutely necessary and also has to happen; everything under capitalism can not not be territorialized." (From Rememory: Absolute Deterritorialization and the Kindergarten Curriculum); See also  1 Fox (paper), 2 Braziel (paper), 3,

References

Boje, D. M. (2000d) "Faciality of Nike Corporation." Working Paper. September 16th.  http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/nike/nike_pages/faciality_theory_nike.html

Deleuze, Gilles & Felix Guattari. (Translation: B. Massumi) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

D&G Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari (1984).

Deleuze and Guattari (1988). New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy, and Culture, Eleanor Kaufman, ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1 excerpt,

Hamman, Robin (2001) Rhizome@Internet: using the Internet as an example of Deleuze and Guattari's "Rhizome" http://www.socio.demon.co.uk/rhizome.html

UCLA paper on D&G http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/echo/volume3-issue1/smithmurphy/

WWW Deleuze and Guattari on the Web

Recommended Sites for Managing Scholars See TAMARA: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science http://www.zianet.com/boje/tamara/