Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

A next meeting will be planned to reflect on the consequences of this discussion …
work still in progress.
6.2 Themes for reflection
I am indecisive about this project, if it ever can be called a project. It starts with an
assumed need for openness, based on internal research and motivated by some loose
ideas concerning involvement, risk management or resilience. The project transforms
into a formal one by a letter of the Minister and Secretary of State, although quasiformal
because it happened that the project is never defined or formalized as such.
Throughout time the subject and targets of the project are moving but moving towards
what? If there are no formalized targets, will there ever be an impetus to change
something? The project preserves some elusiveness for me. And it is still not finished,
if there ever will be a finish.
At the beginning of my project I assumed that it would be likely that existing hierarchical
relations - which in my experience have an impact on the power relations in the
UAS - would be an issue with regard to the project. Being acquainted with the perspective
of a complex responsive process-approach buttressed that assumption. Of
course this perspective has started to influence my way of working.
From that I did not expect that I or we could create an artificial free space where
everybody would or could speak freely and frankly. I assumed that taking time to
discuss a subject like dissent could help, at least to get used to the idea that this was
an issue that could be discussed seriously. I assumed the discussions needed to be
approached prudently by stimulating conversations step by step, because the subject
and the relations are touchy. I was not in a hurry and there was no tight planning
regarding time or targets. However the question then becomes if this way of working
has had consequences for the course of the project. What about time as such in this
case, as regularly projects have clear cut targets and clear cut time schedules. Did the
lack of time-related planning give way towards another kind of result? Is there something
to say about the idea of time and a complex responsive process-approach?
However, the narrative still begs the question whether I still fooled myself in assuming
that a rational discussion about the encouraging of dissent could be possible. Power is
about hierarchy and control and as such the subject of this project. Power influences
or frames the embarked on discussion about power. Discussing the need of openness
is discussing mutual relations which are at stake in the discussions itself. I wonder if
this project is viciously weighed down through which every discussion about power is
in some way determined by existing power-relations among the involved.
When an organization is defined as ‘… a collective bending of individuals wills to a
common purpose.” (Clegg et al., 2006: 2) it is obvious that within the process of ‘ben-
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