Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

important issues in my practice, how these issues are socially construed in the interactions
among me and my colleagues and what might be learned from these experiences.
The research brought quite some surprising outcomes and originated some insights
which may be helpful for others working in more or less the same circumstances.
Given its ontological and epistemological assumptions the research has not provided
in some general solutions regarding uncovered drawbacks of performativity and
policy. My insights are not meant as a set of systematic generalizations to be a next
meal for the tapeworm. However, they may be worthwhile in general discussions
regarding performativity and educational policy.
1.5 A bird’s eye of my research
Three narratives of in total 4 narratives concern activities regarding my work as an
adviser to the board. One narrative is about my activities in a project on identity-management
(chapter 4), a second narrative is about my involvement with an internal
process of developing performance agreements (chapter 5) and a third narrative is
about a discussion about the potential of constructive dissent for organizational
development (chapter 6).
In the narrative about the project on identity-management I write about a period of
10 weeks in which I was involved in a coordination team. This team had to prepare
conclusions for the Executive Board regarding the evaluation of the results of an
identity-management programme. In the description, analysis and reflection on this
process I learned to understand how conclusions – which will have impact on the
policy of the UAS - are moulded in the interactions among those involved. Moreover, I
felt provoked to reflect upon my role as adviser within a broad range of role-metaphors
varying from a ventriloquist to a corporate jester.
In the narrative about the performance agreements I write about a period of 8
months. During that period I was one of the two project-leaders which were responsible
for drawing up the mentioned before performance agreements for the UAS. You
would expect that given the potential consequences of the performance agreements,
the drawing up of these agreements would have been a well-organized and rather
rational undertaking. My narrative, analysis and reflections upon this period of 8
months point to a rather Babylonian and Sisyphean process of internal negotiations,
lucky coincidence, differences in power and of strong interdependency among the
involved. Again I felt provoked to reflect upon my role as adviser, this time more
oriented on aspects of mediating, connecting and linking in a world which has become
rather unpredictable.
In the narrative about dissent I write about a period of one and a half year. In this
period I was involved in a search for how to think about and how to organize dissent
1. Introduction: research into performativity from a ‘personal’ perspective | 21