Embodied Work, Divided Labour: Subjectivity and the Scientific Management of the Body in Frederick W. Taylor's 1907 `Lecture on Management'

Abstract

Frederick Taylor's 1907 `Lecture on Management' is an important text for what it reveals about the constitution of the working subject in Taylorist discourses of management. This article reads Taylor's lecture in order to contribute to the debate about bodies at work in recent literature. Taylor's lecture is read using insights from recent feminist scholarship on corporeality and subjectivity. It is suggested that the application of these bodies of theory to the theorization of the working body has the potential to contribute to a richer understanding of embodied labour.