`Outing' Organizational Analysts: Some Reflections Upon Parker's Tantrum

Abstract

Parker (1995a) asks a fundamental question begged by the postmodern suspicion of modernist metanarratives: `Critique in the Name of What?' His discussion of this issue, in which a self-consciously ethical commitment is advocated, is used in this paper as a springboard for further reflection upon the possibility of making the articulation and pursuit of ethico-political concerns central to the production of knowledge about organizing and organizations. Parker favours a humanist orientation, which respondents to his paper persuasively criticize for its voluntarism and subjectivism. In contrast, I commend a post-humanist (not anti-humanist) approach which suggests a way of retaining Parker's ethico-politico commitment without falling foul of the problems identified by his critics.