Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

esilient. Amongst others they suggest to stimulate diversity in analyses about processes
in organizations including counter-analyses of existing practices, diversity in
personnel and to stimulate a working climate where people feel safe to discuss problems
or malfunctions. From a theoretical perspective resilience is not “… a technological
device; rather it is an organizational or individual capacity meant to prevent
dysfunctions emerging and to appear if something unwanted and (relatively) unforeseen
happens.” (Karlsen and Pritchard, 2013: 4). From the onset in the discussions
about dissent resilience is a subject. Paul Broersen advocates this perspective from the
beginning, in due course stimulated by the announced Ministerial policy regarding the
responsibility to organize constructive dissent. The almost general wish to keep in
touch with different opinions has to do with early warnings to avoid mismanagement.
For instance for the deans: if a situation is discussed with the ombudsman they might
have overlooked some serious problem.
In practice the discussions – whether apart or joint - appear to be a medley of arguments
of different discursive backgrounds, which in the interactional processes are
weighed, dismissed, forgotten, repressed, elaborated upon and combined into intentions
and proposals. To state it otherwise: neither there were pure social technological,
rebellious or resilient participants, nor is what happened to explain by one of the
perspectives. The different arguments, which I categorized into three discourses, are
used in paragrammatical way, that is “... creatively, opportunistically and individualistically.
In this, they resemble cooking recipes and cookery books, which different users
employ or experiment with in widely differently ways, for widely differing ends.”
(Gabriel, 2002: 134). Homan (2013) speaks of the presence of a lucky dip of arguments
within organizations, an abundance of arguments of which participants draw from in
their local conversations. These arguments are ‘there’ to help to develop a position in
the discussions and out of which in the end more or less shared themes emerge.
Apparently, the three different perspectives taken apart did not correspond with the
evolving practice of existing persons involved in the discussions. In practice everybody
and everything was or used a bit of everything. The three theoretical perspectives as
such confound their abstractions from reality with tangible practices, in which the
theoretical perspectives have an argumentative value and are used in the power play.
Given the results of the discussions up till now I think that all participants operate
practically from a multidimensional perspective on the subject at hand. The discussions
in the groups are a wisp of situations in which arguments pass around unevenly. If
I look at power as the subject at hand, I experience that dissent as a topic in its different
dimensions - resistance, opposition and resilience - passes around, but up till now
that none prevails. To explain what might have happened up till now a framework is
needed which in some way goes beyond the different positions.
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