Organizational identity and Space of Action

Abstract

Post-Structuralism has been criticized for reducing individuals to subject positions. This essay responds to this criticism by illustrating how individuals positioned as subjects reflect upon and challenge their socially ascribed identities. More specifically, it examines how a group of women 'service workers' employed by a public university respond to patriarchical, bureaucratic and capitalist articulations of their identity. The essay argues that the women's experiences of the contradictions and antagonisms that rupture these discourses generate a sense of 'lack' that has the effect of opening up alternative possibilities for action and self-understanding. However, these alternatives are not autonomously generated but are always/already specific to the individual's existential situation.