Christina Volkmann

Financial phantasmagoria: corporate image-work in times of crisis

Our purpose in this article is to relate the real movements in the economy during 2008 to the ‘image-work’ of financial institutions. Over the period January—December 2008 we collected 241 separate advertisements from 61 financial institutions published in the Financial Times. Reading across the ensemble of advertisements for themes and evocative images provides an impression of the financial imaginaries created by these organizations as the global financial crisis unfolded. In using the term ‘phantasmagoria’ we move beyond its colloquial sense of a set of strange images designed to dazzle towards the more technical connotation used by Rancière (2004) who suggested that words and images can offer a trace of an overall determining set-up if they are torn from their obviousness so they become phantasmagoric figures. The key phantasmagoric figure we identify here is that of the financial institution as timeless, immortal and unchanging; a coherent and autonomous entity amongst other actors. This notion of uniqueness belies the commonality of thinking which precipitated the global financial crisis as well as the limited capacity for control of financial institutions in relation to market events. It also functions as a powerful naturalizing force, making it hard to question certain aspects of the recent period of ‘capitalism in crisis’.

The Bauhaus and the Business School: Exploring Analogies, Resisting Imitation

We offer here a case history of one of the 20th centurys most famous organizations: The Bauhaus. In mapping various tensions and contradictions running through the Bauhaus we endeavour to provide a richer texture to the debates on the future of the business school which have become increasingly prominent in the field of management and organization studies. While we explore possible analogies between the Bauhaus and todays business schools, it is this very exploration which we intend to scrutinize at the same time. Our objective is not to mine the Bauhaus as something that existed in the past and whose principles (whatever they are now deemed to be) we can shape into a convenient, handy tool for current management teaching. In looking closely at the Bauhaus example we also detect the pitfalls of tracing straightforward equivalence. Our piece is intended to revitalize the somewhat stale discourse on the future of the business school; it is not offered as a final, one-size-fits-all solution.

The fantasy of the organizational One

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the politics of and in organizational transformations in the wake of the fall of the Berlin wall and Germanys reunification.Design/methodology/approach – The paper juxtaposes a political‐philosophical perspective informed by Ranciere – what we call a dramaturgy of politics – with the findings of an ethnographic study conducted in the Berlin State Library in 2002/2003.Findings – The paper outlines a reading of the event of November 9, 1989 and its aftermath as a dissensual event of politics proper, i.e. the emergence of a new political subjectivity, followed by a consensual process of social organization. In the state library, both the consensual “fantasy of the organizational One” as well its disruption are causing struggles over what is visible and sayable. A dramaturgy of politics thus encourages us to add our voices to the specific time‐spaces in which an excess of words, signs and forms alters the configuration of what is visible and expressible....

Consuming the Bauhaus

The “large conglomerate of changing ideas behind the name ‘Bauhaus’” (Kentgens‐Craig 1998, 67), provides an ideal ground around which to explore notions of art and oppression. The closure of the original Bauhaus in 1933 was among the first of the Nazi suppressions after Hitler came to power, a fact which certainly has contributed to the subsequent canonisation of the Bauhaus as the “crucible of modernism”. In the decades following its closure we find an increasing interest in the art and design generated by the individual artists associated with the Bauhaus. The reception history of the Bauhaus, which we will trace geographically to the USA and a divided post‐war Germany, contains the repression and virtual disappearance of its utopian humanistic‐social dimensions. We suggest that the ways in which the Bauhaus has been interpreted and used “posthumously” for various political and ideological ends, both includes and implicates us when making the Bauhaus idea “usable”.

The Idea of Marx in Financial Times: A Dialectical Reading of Crisis and Recovery

We introduce the ‘Idea of Marx’ to put into question events and discourses that emerged during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and examine how these coalesced into a particular economic imaginary of ‘recovery’. The ‘engine’ which will allow us to move in the ‘idea of Marx’ goes by the name of the dialectic. In developing the notion of the dialectic we rely heavily on the work of Fredric Jameson and as such this paper can be seen as an attempt to put his theoretical ideas to work. We believe that a dialectical reading of financial press coverage has the potential to challenge the economic imaginary of ‘recovery’, thus keeping the way open for the coming of something (radically) different. In order to put the dialectic into motion we offer four initial wayward theses: 1. There has been no ‘Crisis of Capitalism’ 2. We must change the valence of the GFC from negative to positive 3. The relationship between finance capitalism and ‘free markets’ is deeply problematic 4. We must resist the regulation discourse