Resisting Sovereignty

I feel as though a lot of my critical energies are spent building ways of resisting sovereignty; of the autonomy – because, apparently, independently verifiable – of the technologies of management, of the mechanisms of executive education and of the structures of the individual. One way of resisting, one line of questioning that makes transparent the violence of the sovereignties I’m talking about is to reveal ‘dogma’ for what it is. Dogmatism narrows the range of theoretical possibilities available to us. The dogmatic is averse to viewing things other than through the prescribed doctrine, which, for whatever reason has become the settled, the established opinion.

My wife, as she saw me sat this evening watching a movie slumped in the chair in our comfortable house with my comfortable job, told me that I was “just a little bit” anti-establishment. Yeah: I recognize that caveat in her description. But how unsettled does one have to be to call oneself a rebel? So this thing with sovereignty and dogma? Comfy chair or no comfy chair, I can’t bring myself to invoke an absolute. Or rather, I can’t resist the chance of spotting the contingency of a moment to spoil the extra-linguistic or extra-political call to transcendence. Reductionistic and totalizing teleologies, especially in the ethical realm, are compelling. But one has ethical responsibilities too in the face of yielding to subjugation and servitude: and unquestioned dogma is the force of that yielding. Revealing the dogmatic in educational or managerial practices is what one does by adopting eclecticism as one’s method of questioning: thus is my argument.  Making decisions on the basis of what seems best instead of following some single doctrine or style is what I mean by eclecticism. Methodologically this entails being promiscuous, which is what I’ve done with my reading concerning executive & leadership education and with my attempt to set up, what Michael Hardt calls, “new constellations.” Poststructuralism is the philosophical basis of the eclectic and promiscuous approach I’m taking. As Hardt says, what is really at stake through this promiscuity “is the formation of a new canon, a new constellation of political and philosophical traditions” [1]. Poststructuralism is just such a new philosophical tradition when superimposed on management and leadership education. Looked at the other way, my attempt is presumptuous and wanting of legitimation or external authority, transcendent or otherwise. However – so the cyclic argumentation goes – such totalizing legitimation is not forthcoming due to my (not yet sufficiently) stated resistance towards the sovereign. Instead, and for the foreseeable future, I’ve decided to stick with my promiscuity and eclecticism as a means of unsettling the settled. Obviously, I need longer to state my objections to sovereignty, and quite what this notion itself is. Though, armchair rebel or otherwise, I can but make a start.

The basis of my stubbornness is a growing appreciation of the ethical responsibilities I have towards those with and for whom acts of leadership education are provided; the constituents of which are my fellow educators; the managers, executives and leaders as consumers of that educative process; those organizationally-bound individuals affected by the actions of that educated (or otherwise) elite; and the wider society and environment affected by the actions of those in-corporations. In total, a ‘multitude’, in the words of Hardt & Negri [2]. That sense of infinite responsibility – qua Derrida – demands radical innovation of that educative process, if unquestioned dogma does indeed ‘narrow the range of theoretical possibilities available to us.’ The radicality and breadth of this innovation necessitates an examination of the political aspects on which dogmas are founded and legitimated. And radicality, by another name, is activism.

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[1] Michael Hardt in ‘Sovereignty, Multitudes, Absolute Democracy: A Discussion between Michael Hardt and Thomas L. Dumm about Hardt’s and Negri’s Empire‘ in Passavant & Dean’s Empire’s New Clothes, (New York: Routledge, 2004), p169. [2] M.Hardt, A.Negri Multitude (London: Penguin Books).