The Virus and Organization Studies: A changing episteme

Abstract

As scholars on organization, we have been confronting the challenges of a changing episteme. The arrival of a new coronavirus and its devastating pandemic compel us to ask what the virus means for organization studies. The essay contributes to this endeavour by attending to the implication of the virus in the (re)organization of meaning and by explicating the ways in which metaphor and metonymy enable one to trace challenges in this (re)organization. In doing so, it takes inspiration from, and contributes to, the theme of (in)visibility that is central to X & Organization Studies. The multifaceted approach is rendered through “spectrographies”, texts that craft haunting experiences of epistemic fragmentation into organizational knowledge. The essay unfolds through four sessions that engage with meaning across analogy, ontology, epistemology and relationality. Each session offers a double reading of its respective dynamics. The first reading outlines challenges in the (re)organization of meaning by (re)engaging with the virus metaphor and its relevance to organization studies. The second reading approaches the virus through metonymy, a trope that is often overlooked. It contributes to organization by tracing objects and subjects through metonymies of materialization and identification. It shows how humans wrestle not only with a pathogen, but also with the self and with other people. Together, the four sessions illustrate how metaphor and metonymy alert us to epistemic disruptions and instabilities associated with the virus. Altogether, the essay contributes to organization studies by turning the interest in meaning and organization to the organization of meaning. It also extends knowledge on tropes in organization by showing how the virus is rendered more powerful through metonymy than it ever was as metaphor. For organization studies to attend to the virus effectively, it must contend with its inherent undecidability. In closing, the essay frames an agenda for organizational scholarship.