Leadership & Wrestling

It occured to me, whist reading, again, the wonderful and surprising essay by Roland Barthes 'The World of Wrestling' (1957), that I could use this idea as a base for a paper on leadership for the leadership conference later this year. As a model the Barthian inspiration would serve as a gentle though arresting preamble into an extended and frighteningly conclusive poststructural dissembling of some cherrished notions: notably, the self, the veneers of authenticity, psychological depth of the leader, and the consistency of follower's commitment to the leader. Alied to this is something else I'd like to try out with either this paper or another; and that is, to critique the accepted graphical depiction of the network metaphor - the spidery diagram with connecting lines and nodes. I'd like to bring to the foreground the interstercies, the gaps between the lines of network, the bits not captured by traffic of networkness along the pipes. To do this I think I'd use Latour's actor network theory, and start including the unsaids of place, objects, equipment and tools, and time, all of which are important determinants in the network. And since we're flipping things over, why not throw in to this tumble dryer of concepts the good old notion of self.

Lyotard: Right This Instant

Now here's an obscure sounding title: but this book by Roger Mourad (1997) is a gem for unpacking the story of Lyotard (particularly 'The Postmodern Condition') and his pomo philosophy of higher education (pp.28-37)

"The dynamic and experimental sense of inquiry implied by Lyotard emphasises inquiry as an intellectual activity that aims to undergo and produce change."

Just the short section on Lyotard has made me realise that SoM's concern with pragmatism is of the same quality as that displayed in a selection of postmodern - specifically, poststructuralist - conceptions of knowledge.