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Management Communication Quarterly
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Decaf Resistance

On Misbehavior, Cynicism, and Desire in Liberal Workplaces

Alessia Contu

Warwick Business School

The author reconnects resistance in production to its radical roots. Current literature suggests that resistance in the liberal workplaces of late capitalism has gone underground, becoming mostly evident in unofficial, offstage practices such as cynicism, parody, and humor. The author argues this resistance is too often a decaf resistance. This is a resistance without the cost of radically changing the economy of enjoyment, which ties us to our master. The author argues that resistance, as a real act, which suspends and changes the constellation of power relations, has a cost that cannot be accounted for in advance. To understand this cost, we need an ethics, which the author calls, following Lacan, the Ethics of the Real.

Key Words: resistance • ethics • capitalism • power

Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 3, 364-379 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0893318907310941
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