A tragic ethics for the Anthropocene: On the unmanageable and impossible in management learning

Abstract

This essay offers a reflection on which ethics can critically guide the field of management learning in the Anthropocene. Based on a negative ontology of humankind and nature, I understand the Anthropocene as being unmanageable and imposing an ethical dimension of the impossible on the field of management learning. Inspired by the Lacanian concept of tragic ethics, which is based on certain categories – radical contingency, indeterminacy and the impossible – I propose a tragic ethics for the Anthropocene. Such ethics, articulated to an indigenous ontology and ethics, presents the possibility of an open way of knowing and learning in the context of management learning, which is necessary not only for the radical contingency of the Anthropocene but also for the inclusion of other voices and knowledge, both human and nonhuman.