From Silence to Noise – The Politics of the Other in Organization Theory

Abstract

Building on the work of Rancière, this paper theorizes otherness in organization. Extant research primarily understands the Other as a subject silenced by the voices of the One. The underlying assumption is that albeit silent, the Other is still perceived as a subject able to articulate him-/herself in intelligible ways to the One. But what happens when the Other is not even perceived as a subject part of the community of human speech? We introduce the concept of noise to understand such otherness that has remained theoretically neglected and empirically understudied so far. We develop how affect plays a significant role for how the position of Other as noise is produced and overcome – something that we term miscounting and recounting. The paper extends the theoretical repertoire of organizational scholarship by developing the notion of the Other as noise, the role of affect in struggles over otherness and the significance of in/equality enacted in practice.