Special Issue on: “Excess of History”

Guest Editor: Lorraine Warren

For Tamara Journal of Critical Organization Inquiry http://tamarajournal.com

Call Close Date:  Nov 15 2008

Humans, unlike animals, suffer from an “excess of history” according to Nietzsche: a preoccupation with historical sensemaking that overwhelms our noticing of the present.  Corporate histories for example, often use symbolism that suggests a reverence for an antiquarian past that can suffocate prospective, forward-looking thinking that instead focuses on what is emergent, what is novel, what may be life-affirming for the future.  In ossifying the past, antenarratives, multiple voices, alternative directions and living stories (& counter-stories) of resistance are buried in sanitised corporate accounts designed for uncritical mass consumption.  Nietzsche argues that instead of being manacled by the past, we should learn how to better employ history for the purpose of life.  A critical history should therefore not only re-story the past, but also imagine the present and the future. Even a critical history can deteriorate into cynicism without action. He argues for a balance of the three histories: antiquarian, monumental, and critical

This special issue is an invitation to explore the theme of an excess of history in our everyday lives.  An excess of history presents critical and contradictory issues as globalisation, new technologies and creeping corporatisation of formerly non-business organisations impact on life, work and play.  Contributors are invited to consider themes where an excess of history manifests in, for example:

• Corporate theatrics and spectacles
• Corporate control
• Modes of communication
• The information age
• Technological trajectories
• Innovation and entrepreneurship
• Expressions of spirituality
• Leisure and play
• Modes of resistance
• Cultural movements
• Precarious alliances

Contributors are invited to explore where and how historical sensemaking suppresses the alternative, or the new, and to consider where imaginings of new futures and new possibilities might emerge.  Finally it is an invitation to re-story the future.

Contact for submissions:

Dr Lorraine Warren

Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship & Innovation

School of Management

University of Southampton

Highfield campus

Southampton  SO17 1BJ

Phone: +44 (0) 2380 598972  Email: lw4@soton.ac.uk