‘He Pours Love and You Eat It’: A Psychoanalytic Study of Human Contact and Love in Affective Labour

Abstract

This psychoanalytic study of affective labour focuses on its two central elements: human contact and love. It is based on a multi-sited organizational ethnography of the fine-dining sector in Istanbul, Turkey, where new restaurant areas known as ‘show kitchens’ place chefs in face-to-face contact with patrons. To understand the psychosocial processes of affective production, we analyze chefs’ and patrons’ experiences of encounters in and around ‘show kitchens’. We demonstrate that affect is produced through unconscious contact mediated by socio-cultural representations, which are hegemonized by the ethos of love for one’s job. We contribute to the extant literature on affective labour by studying the desirous interplay between producers and consumers of affect. Specifically, we theorize the role of the psyche in affective production, and offer a new, psychoanalytic conceptualization of affective labour. We conclude by discussing our conceptualization’s organizational and political implications.

Grounding in the unconscious: “The field” in psychosocial organizational ethnography

“…The proposed approach can provide a helpful framework for researching new ethnographic objects such as Artifical Intelligence (AI), algorithms and digital platforms that blur the ontological boundaries between the living and nonliving, intelligent and non-intelligent, sentient and non-sentient, etc. (see also O'Doherty and Neyland, 2019: 457-458) to offer a counterpoint to sanitized abstract narratives of late capitalism (Özdemir Kaya and Fotaki, 2022). We hope this article will inspire organizational ethnographers with diverse theoretical convictions to provide reflexive, transparent, and theoretically-informed accounts of how they construct "the field.…”

“…Similarly, Mersky (2008) uses drawings of dreams by organizational members as a basis for free association. Although Bion and Klein's psychoanalytic theories are a primary influence in most of these (Arnaud, 2002;Parker, 2016) Psychoanalytic discourse analysis (Driver, 2013;Hoedemaekers, 2010) Psychoanalytic narrative analysis (Driver, 2017a;Gabriel, 2014) Grounded theory (Ekman, 2013;Kenny et al, 2020a) Psychoanalytically-inflected ethnography (Fotaki, 2022;Kenny and Gilmore, 2014;Müller, 2012;Özdemir Kaya and Fotaki, 2022) Affective The Symbolic (symbolic identification),…”

“…The (Bloom, 2016;Cederström and Spicer, 2014;Dashtipour and Rumens, 2018) Psychoanalytic narrative analysis (Gabriel, 1991) Psychoanalytically-inflected ethnography (Özdemir Kaya and Fotaki, 2022;Kenny, 2012 (Spicer and Cederström, 2010;Sørensen and Villadsen, 2015) Psychoanalytically inflected ethnography (Fotaki, 2022); Kenny,…”

“…We follow Lacanian theory because this explains the complex links between ontology, epistemology, and technique that interest us here (see Lacan, 1999Lacan, , 2006Lacan, , 2013. Organizational and social researchers commonly prefer Lacanian theory for it offers a psychosocial ontology of the subject, allowing exploration of the psychic and affective dimensions of human experience as social and political, rather than individual, phenomena (Özdemir Kaya and Fotaki, 2022).…”

“…We subsequently focus on apposite methods for constructing an unconscious field and ways of embedding in it as a researcher. To illustrate the proposed approach, we present Author 1′s research on "loving one's job" in the fine-dining sector in Turkey (Özdemir Kaya and Fotaki, 2022), and Author 2′s research on communities' self-organization in response to refugees' and forced migrants' arrivals in the Greek islands (Fotaki, 2022). We conclude by discussing the theoretical contributions and practical implications of our conceptualization of "the field" for psychosocial (organizational) ethnographic research.…”