long live Rortian abnormal discourse!
November 18, 2006
Given the foregoing, leadership education is leadership itself once it acknowledges its ethico-political agency and capitalises on poststructural leadership’s hegemonic status. Maybe the form of leadership that institutional sites of leadership education can claim is that of edification not education. Rorty champions edification as the embrace of abnormal discourse “for finding new, better, more interesting, more fruitful ways of speaking” (1980, p360). For normal discourse there is a consensus among parties concerning the rules that must be followed in order for a question, an answer or an argument to be considered. Contrarily, abnormal discourse breaks all the rules: “the product of abnormal disourse” says Rorty, “can be anything from nonsense to intellectual revolution, and there is no discipline which describes it, any more than there is a discipline devoted to the unpredictable, or of ‘creativity’” (1980, p320). I would like to encourage the reader to take up Rorty’s challenge of abnormal discourse and, thereby, progressive leadership edification.
November 21, 2006 at 1:40 pm
The analogy given by executivezen of knowing what a country is like by approaching its border reminds me of entering Tanzania from the Kenyan border, as you stepped across the line you stepped back 50 years in history and immediately noticed the authoritarian and rigid application of authority. This showed up throughout the country despite the “modern” democratic face presented in the capital. Our executive education system is much like this, the unease and disruptive discourses on the border is not reflected in the public face of the various institutions, but it pervades everything, but is strictly hidden behind a facade.
By insisting that the leadership answer is out there and can only be found through models, research and education is stifling what the art of leadership is about. We need to show people how to create, initiate, sustain and develop leadership that makes a positive outcome on lives, making things better, rather than the very narrow focus of making businesses better. The concept of edification fits so well here. Illich says we should deschool society, is it time we released leadership from the confines of business and profit?
November 21, 2006 at 2:46 pm
Thanks QualityWarrior. Your emancipatory tone stikes a chord with Rorty’s concern for social hope in ‘edification’.