Critical ambiguities - ambiguities of critique: Technologies of the self in entrepreneurial activism

Introduction

In Foucauldian organization studies, a shift of emphasis has taken place from the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ (Ricoeur, 2008) – uncovering modes of subjugation behind the smokescreen of individual freedom – towards the task of discovering potentials of agency, change and resistance (Raffnsøe et al., 2022; Randall and Munro, 2010; McKinlay and Taylor, 2014; Paulsson, 2011). Such positive registers of subjectivity have been sought by drawing on Foucault’s work on care of the self (souci de soi). This work sees ethics as practical work of self on the self in relation to aims, techniques, and substance to be worked on and a way of attending to one’s self as a certain kind of subject (Foucault, 1997a). A key theoretical effort in this line of inquiry has been the attempt to transcend the rigid opposition between conduct and counter-conduct – that is, conducts either sustaining or challenging the status quo (Brewis, 2019; Michaeli, 2017; Munro, 2014; Raffnsøe et al., 2019).

Overcoming this dichotomy is indispensable in the study of those social movement organizations (SMOs) which combine critical concern for social justice with entrepreneurial modi operandi, and as such, are not easily classifiable to either conduct of conduct or counter-conduct. We follow Sandoval (2019) in labelling such organizations entrepreneurial activist organizations, although other terms have also been used (see e.g. Mukherjee and Banet-Weiser, 2012). These organizations are characterized by an intertwinement of advocacy for issues of social and ecological justice reminiscent of activism with private financial activity and interests reminiscent of entrepreneurship.

We contribute to the study of entrepreneurial activism by examining technologies of the self in a group of Finnish entrepreneurial activists referred to as ‘Gardeners’. We focus on how the Gardeners mobilize Theory U (Scharmer, 2018), a popular leadership and management toolbox. The aim of our study is to argue that, through their use of Theory U, the Gardeners establish an ‘undecided space’ where identities, common aims and modes of operation are problematized. In other words, subjects and objects are not yet linked to either conduct of conduct or counter-conduct. We suggest that such technologies of the self are imbued in profound ambiguities between autonomy and heteronomy as well as identity and de-subjectivation rarely addressed in critical organization studies in general, and research on entrepreneurial activism in particular.

We begin by considering the notion of ‘critical attitude’ in Foucault’s work as well as its connections to Foucauldian organization research. We then give some background on the Gardeners and describe our methods of data production and analysis. Based on our analysis, we highlight two types of technologies – anakhoresis and metanoia – which the Gardeners utilize to produce and maintain their critical attitude. We conclude by summarizing the implications of our analysis for the study of the critical potential of SMOs.

Critique and its ambiguities

SMOs have become an important site for drawing case examples in the study of cultivating forms of agency and counter-conducts in organization studies. This is in large part due to their ability to act as loci where new forms of living outside neoliberal capitalism are imagined (Munro, 2014: 1128, see also Barratt, 2008; Death, 2010; Raffnsøe et al., 2019). A prominent example in this line of investigation is Munro’s (2014) study, which explores the potential inherent in SMOs for developing alternative forms of subjectivity. These are analysed as so-called counter-conducts, ‘whose objective is a different form of conduct, that is to say: wanting to be conducted differently, by other leaders (conducteurs)..., towards other objectives..., and through other procedures and methods’ (Foucault, 2007: 259).

Using well-known SMOs as examples, Munro (2014) highlights four types of technologies of the self that bring about various types of counter-conduct. These are 1) Bearing witness, which ‘concerns remembering the injustices that should not be forgotten as well as raising popular awareness of activist issues’ (ibid.: 1136); 2) Direct action, which includes ‘traditional’ modes of activism such as protests and marches, as well as creating alternative ways of life (ibid.: 1137-1138); 3) The care of the self, referring to the ‘great deal of self-discipline’ (ibid.: 1138) required of the members of SMOs in order to comply with these organizations’ goals and practices (ibid.: 1139-1140); 4) The use of pleasure, which involves using pleasurable practices such as eating to transform one’s habits of consumption (ibid.: 1140). 

Munro sees these counter-conducts as ‘cultivating “unconventional” forms of subjectivity that present new ways of living and challenging the status quo’ (Munro, 2014: 1141). This speaks to contemporary discussions concerning conduct of conduct and counter-conduct by contesting the allegedly reactionary, post-hoc nature of counter-conduct (see e.g. Thomas and Davies 2005; Cadman, 2010). 

Yet in exploring forms of agency in counter-conducts, one can probe further. Munro’s characterization of ‘unconventional forms of subjectivity’ implies that an orientation towards resistance is already presupposed here: a choice has been made within the SMO to cultivate ‘unconventional’ subjectivity and to challenge the status quo.  Problematic political structures have been identified, strategies and tactics to challenge them have been created and activist identities have been formed. For us, this excludes from the picture ‘critique’ as the practice of ‘uncovering...thought and trying to change it’ (Foucault, 2001b: 456): the reflective practice needed to identify actors and their positions, the values and principles of action. In the four technologies that Munro explores, this has already taken place, making it in turn possible to cultivate alternative practices and institutions (see also Weiskopf and Willmott, 2013). We seek to complement Munro’s work by scrutinizing this ‘anterior’ change – by bringing to light the practices of critique needed to establish such choices.

To do so, it is necessary to pay attention to the nexus between critique, freedom, and ethics. A necessary condition for any critical search for alternative ways of conducting ourselves is the freedom to act differently. As Foucault puts it, ‘freedom is the ontological condition of ethics’ (1997a: 284). Ethics is then understood as a concern for the self, a concern for how one conducts oneself, given the freedom to conduct oneself differently (ibid.). At the heart of the technologies of the self is thus an element of self-reflection understood as the question of how to conduct oneself (Foucault, 2007: 258). This finds resonance in Foucault's notion that government presupposes at least a minimal degree of subjective freedom – the capability for reflection and to make choices regarding one's actions, and to refuse to be governed in a certain way (Foucault, 2001b: 342; 1997a; cf. Rose, 1999). This reflexive element is a pivotal point for the emergence and stabilization of both conduct of conduct and counter-conduct (see also Cadman, 2010; Harrebye, 2016) It is the condition for ‘the conscious (réfléchie) practice of freedom’ – freedom ‘informed by reflection’ (Foucault, 1997a: 284).

This reflexive element is the condition for the ‘critical attitude’ (Foucault, 1997b: 23, 82) the movement of thought through ‘which the subject gives himself the right to question truth on its effects of power and question power on its discourses of truth’ (Foucault, 1997b:  32). Critical attitude is a ‘certain way of thinking, speaking and acting, a certain relationship to what exists, to what one knows, to what one does, a relationship to society, to culture and also a relationship to others’ (Foucault, 1997b: 24). The historical emergence of this attitude can be traced back at least to Hellenistic practices and mediaeval pastoral power. In the modern era, its paradigmatic form is found in Kant’s dictum that enlightenment is the individual releasing himself from ‘self-imposed tutelage’ (Foucault, 1997b).

For us, these definitions express several ambiguities. First, Foucault (1979: 52) sees that ‘there is indeed always something which in some way escapes the relations of power...which is not at all the more or less docile or reactive raw material, but which is the centrifugal movement, the inverse energy, that which escapes’. Such a definition leaves unclear the exact grounding of this reflexive freedom – whether there, for instance, is a mental faculty of some sort enabling such activity (see also Foucault, 1997b). This implies, second, an obscure relation between autonomy and heteronomy. In the practice of critique, the subject is at once subjugated and de-subjugated: governed by internalized power structures, while at the same time able to recognize and to gain some distance to them, as well as to envision ways to be governed otherwise (see Cadman, 2010: 546-547.) Third, it is unclear whether the practice of critique actually escapes dominant relations of power or whether it is enveloped as a torsion therein.

We propose that the existence of these ambiguities, rather as problems to be solved, are an incitement to further probe their role in reflective, critical activities in SMOs. They revolve around a central issue of the origin of the technologies of the self. Such technologies are 

not something invented by the individual himself. They are models that he finds in his culture and are proposed, suggested, imposed upon him by his culture, his society, and his social group. (Foucault, 1997a: 291) 

If this is the case, there is always the danger that these technologies turn out to be practices of governance rather than critique. We aim to show that the ambiguities inherent in the critical attitude can keep these practices safe from being resolved into conduct of conduct or counter-conduct, domination or resistance. As such, studying them in more detail holds promise in making sense of the ‘anterior change’ presupposed by Munro's work and the critical potential of SMOs more generally.

This point of departure allows for examining the critical attitude and the technologies of the self imbued with it as ‘risky and transfigurative’ as they involve profoundly questioning one’s subjectivity (the conditions of the truth of one’s own experience) and thereby ‘risking the self in the process’ (Cadman, 2010: 550). We focus on those technologies of the self which involve putting one’s self radically at stake and which aim for transformation without a clear view or certainty about its outcomes. For Foucault, such technologies are found in ancient Greek and Hellenistic, but especially Christian care of the self, where the origins of the ‘critical attitude’ are also traced (Foucault, 1997b: 26; see also Schubert, 2021). They involve a transformative upward spiral of sorts, where the technologies of the self alter the subject so as to be open for a truth and freedom which, in turn, have a further transformative, even disintegrating effect on the subject (Foucault, 2001). We highlight how this critical attitude takes place in the practices of an entrepreneurial activist group the Gardeners, which we introduce in the next section.

Case: The Gardeners and Theory U

Throughout 2020 to early 2021 we followed the incubation phase of a Finnish entrepreneurial activist group pseudonymized here as the Gardeners. Their declared aim is to provide ‘facilitation’, a ‘platform’, and a ‘support group’ for individuals and organizations envisioning socially and ecologically sustainable projects. A key principle guiding their work is the attempt to combine activism with entrepreneurial profitability with the stated aim of providing a livelihood for themselves (Saari et al., 2022). These traits make the Gardeners a convenient focus for examining the ambiguities of critique. First, the group was in a state where its aims and structures had not yet formed and where it is likely to engage in reflection of its own identity. Second, as a group of entrepreneurial activists, it is not clearly identifiable as either a mainstream business organization or a subversive activist group. The Gardeners are subjected to contemporary forms of conduct of conduct through their market-oriented operation for profit but simultaneously search for counter-conducts by aiming to profoundly transform communities and organizations so as to be governed otherwise.

The group began operations in a local meeting held in May 2020. The first author of this paper found out about the meeting through mutual acquaintances and participated in the hope of conducting research about the group’s operations as part of a research project on environmental activism. While the purpose, size, and structure of the group were entirely open at that point, the research initiative was welcomed by the people present. After the initial meeting, a core group of four people, for whom we utilize the pseudonyms Maria, Jesse, Emil and Laura, started working to create more permanent supportive structures. As a result of their work, a cooperative by the same name was launched in late 2020. No exact number of participants in the various activities organized around the cooperative is available. At a rough estimate the total number of participants is dozens rather than hundreds. 

We focus on the work of the core group during the period 5/2020–12/2020, when its aim was to make sense of what the cooperative is about. In the Finnish legislature, a cooperative is a type of business enterprise where each member pays a membership fee and is then entitled to use the services provided by the cooperative. Unlike a corporation, a cooperative is not intended to maximize profit for its members but rather to provide services at a reasonable cost. The focus of our analysis is nevertheless not in the details of the cooperative but in the core group’s discussions regarding the purpose of the cooperative.

We rely on observational and interview data. The former consists of 14 hours 51 minutes of video recordings from weekly core group meetings (GM) between May and December 2020. The second author – who was working as a researcher in the project led by the first author –  participated in the meetings as a participant observer. While he did take part in the discussions occasionally, his role in the meetings was more of an observer than a participant. This is something that we wish to emphasise with respect to our positioning as researchers: despite the participatory setup, throughout data production and analysis, we maintained a critical distance and do not consider ourselves as complicit in the production of the novel ways of being we analyse below. It is likely that the second author’s participation did influence the group’s thinking and practices to some extent. However, given the fact that the idea for the analysis presented in this paper was only discovered later, it is unlikely that the effects of the second author’s participation are of major significance with respect to the themes presently under scrutiny. In spring 2021, to complement the observational data by pursuing in detail questions touched on in the group meetings, we conducted individual interviews of Maria, Jesse and Laura (Emil was not available) as well as a group interview (GI) where all four were present.

In analyzing the data, we relied on insights from recent developments in qualitative inquiry. We understand data analysis not as a mechanical process of categorizing segments of data, but rather as a process of reading where attention is directed at the assumptions in play in the data (Adams St. Pierre, 2021). As our analysis was guided by Foucault’s concepts, we followed the practice of ‘plugging in’ (Jackson and Mazzei, 2013) our data to Foucault’s texts. In more concrete terms, this means that we engaged in iterative cycles of reading Foucault and our data side by side, with each author conducting individual readings that were then discussed together. Our analysis was based on the question of how technologies of the self play out in the Gardeners’ practices.

We started our analysis with the observational data. As we developed our initial analysis, we noticed that the Gardeners often referred to Theory U when reflecting on their aims and modes of interaction. This prompted us to conduct the group interview, where the Gardeners’ use of Theory U was the main theme. The Gardeners decided to adopt Theory U after two of its members participated in a Theory U workshop and perceived its potential for their group. They want to use Theory U to discover ‘who they are’, and what they want to achieve as a group. Theory U therefore plays a key role in the group’s care of themselves as a set of practices that cultivate reflexivity towards the group’s identity, modes of interaction, aims and relation to the society at large.

Theory U, developed by Otto Scharmer and colleagues at MIT, is one of several recent management and leadership theories stressing the need to react to all-encompassing ruptures and cultivate preparedness and openness toward an unknown future. Responses may lead to an effort to constantly ‘stay ahead of time’ in the sense of sustained experimentation with and ‘reigniting’ leadership (Raffnsøe and Staunæs, 2014). The aspiration of Theory U is to respond to major global threats like ecological crises and the rise of political extremism by enabling pervasive changes in individuals and organizations (Scharmer, 2018). 

Theory U is a toolkit of concepts, tables, diagrams and practices intended to help organizational actors to understand their own activities from new perspectives. According to Scharmer, the ultimate aim of Theory U is to prime entire societies for a future that ‘is wanting to be born’ (2018: 62). This is done through leading a collective, U-shaped process. The U-shape defines a transformative ‘journey’ in which individuals and groups are supposed to abandon their old ways of thinking and acting – moving from the top left of the figure U to the bottom. Eventually, they will reach the ‘source’ at the bottom, a state of intuition and creativity purportedly unfettered by received and calcified preconceptions about the organization – its aims, practices, subjects and relationships. It is intended to enable intuitive experimentation with new ways of thinking and acting. This step is represented by the right side of the U figure, moving from the bottom up. (Scharmer, 2018: 29-30.)

For us, the U journey concept displays a fundamental ambiguity, which resonates with the ambiguities of critical attitude we outlined earlier: The ‘source’ is characterized by intuition and creativity not restricted by conceptions about the identities, aims, and practices of the organization. Yet the purpose of journeying to the source and back again is precisely to establish aims and practices to be followed. It is therefore unclear how an organization’s delimited identity and aims can maintain fidelity to the unfettered creativity and intuition that characterizes their ‘source.’ In other words, not everything discovered in the source is allowed to define the organization. As will be described in more detail below, this process also entails the ambiguities of autonomy and subjectivity: the aim of the U process is to respect the autonomy and true identity of the organization and its members, yet the Gardeners succumb to external aid (i.e., Theory U and its technologies of the self) to be truly free and to discover and express who they really are.

Technologies of undecidability: Anakhoresis and metanoia

The Gardeners used numerous technologies of the self when reflecting on their identity and modes of organization. Many of these are traceable to the Theory U toolkit, but the Gardeners also modified them and introduced exercises similar to those used e.g., in drama pedagogy and service design (Saari et al., 2022). While often inviting the individual to turn towards one’s own interiority, these technologies are essentially collective ‘mixtures of word, gesture, image, sound, rhythm, smell, and touch that help to define the sensibility in which your perception, thinking, identity, beliefs and judgement are set’ (Connolly, 2002: 20). We connect the techniques utilized by the Gardeners to two types of technologies of the self highlighted by Foucault. The first is anakhoresis, the practice of absenting one’s self from one’s surroundings, ideas and feelings, as the condition of establishing subjective autonomy and arriving at truth. The other is metanoia, the practice of constantly renouncing one’s own will and self as a prerequisite for salvation (Foucault, 2001a). We use these terms, not to make claims about historical origins, continuities or dependencies, but as heuristical categories that allow for analytically distinguishing between different kinds of ambiguities in the critical attitude among the Gardeners.

Anakhoresis involves the ambiguity of autonomy and heteronomy – to become truly autonomous in determining one’s own future takes place by a detour of its reverse, the dependence on external guidance and criteria (in this case, a conceptual toolkit of Theory U) for determining what autonomy is. Metanoia reflects the ambiguity of identity – to become a true, authentic subject requires renouncing being susceptible to being defined by any identity or point of view.

Anakhoresis: Ambiguities between autonomy and heteronomy

For Foucault, anakhoresis eis heauton, retreating into oneself, is a longue durée in Western spirituality. In pre-Socratic communities, there already existed rituals of ‘absenting’ or ‘detaching’ oneself ‘on the spot’; ‘somehow breaking contact with the external world, no longer feeling sensations, no longer being disturbed by everything taking place around the self, acting as if you no longer see, and actually no longer seeing what is there before your eyes’ (Foucault, 2001a: 47). Such detachment was understood to be a condition for freedom from restrictive and distorting forces and for a more truthful understanding of the self and the world.

Anakhoresis embodies a paradox as it enacts ‘visible absence’: ‘You are always there, visible to the eyes of others. But you are absent, elsewhere’ (Foucault, 2001a: 478). This paradox of presence and absence has an epistemological and a political register: bracketing the reality and givenness of the world is a precondition for arriving at truth, and for acquiring command over one’s own existence over heteronomy (Foucault, 2001a, 2021). These practices transformed in the subsequent history of philosophy and Christian spirituality (Foucault, 2001a: 48-50). Early Christian askesis added an essential twist wherein the retreat involved an inspection of the soul for elements of external (evil, oppressive) forces. Identifying and detaching these forces from the uncorrupted parts of the self is a condition for truth and salvation (Foucault, 2021). In various forms, anakhoretic practices also became a stable feature of philosophical thinking (Sloterdijk, 2012), and in the modern age, a central characteristic of scientific objectivity (Daston, 1992).

For Theory U, the need for organizations to work on their self-understanding arises in response to what Scharmer calls ‘divides’ (Scharmer, 2018: 17): different forms of estrangement from self, others and nature which afflict contemporary societies and prevent us from viewing reality with open hearts and minds. Marking subjects with internal alienation this way is isomorphic with the aforementioned Christian imagery of a divided soul; partially influenced by oppressive forces but still able to reach for salvation. The existence of divides is identified by Gardeners as well:

For me, the starting point is, above all, the divides…There is a divide between ourselves and ourselves, a sort of inner divide with our spirituality maybe, or a sort of sensitivity. And then a divide between ourselves and society or the community. That is, we are at the apex of egocentricity, where we are terribly alone, or we feel terribly alone. And then a division between self and other, practically speaking, nature. (Emil, GI)

For Gardeners, the change to bridge the divides starts from ‘within’ the human being. It is from there that change is seen to radiate to individuals, work communities and societies. (GM 1) As the Gardeners themselves describe it, this process and the product they market involves ‘thought’:

We are like an ecologically sustainable (laughs) industry in that we produce ideas and thoughts and like mental content. And...our operation will never be like, how could we create a more ecological bottle-opener. The questions are not, like, as concrete as that. Instead, they are more connected with thought.... And it’s like, our U theory and U process are connected with this. (Maria, II)

In Theory-U terms, the antidote to divides is ‘presencing’ through diligent practice aimed at transforming the self (Scharmer, 2018). This means exercises for becoming ‘present’ to one’s self, other humans and the ecosystem by attuning to our sensorial, embodied and intuitive connection with the world. For the Gardeners, overcoming the divides through presencing is a gateway for free thinking and new thoughts and ideas to emerge.

Presencing, however, requires creating a collective distance from the surrounding social environment. Across our data, the idea of becoming present was equated with that of a ‘safe space’, a shared mental state or atmosphere where everyone can participate on their own terms. This became apparent when the Gardeners were discussing ‘vulnerability’ as a shared feature of most of their members. Unless the members tune into their own and each others’ vulnerability, there will be no fruitful ideas and thinking – and ultimately, no action either:

Because vulnerable people have vulnerable thoughts which are also very sensitive to criticism and like dismissal and judgemental attitudes. They are maybe somehow the worst enemies, that, like, paralyse the group. (Maria,II)

Moreover, they insist on the importance of a certain temporal spacing as well. Although ‘the house is on fire’ – a reference to global ecological crises – one needs time for thought, a feeling of peace and calm instead of fear and hurry in order to create change. It is also important to learn to see the coming together of the group as an important event in itself, irrespective of what kinds of actions may ensue from it (GM 4.).

Sustaining such a safe space, the Gardeners’ meetings regularly begin with a round of ‘check-in’ and end analogously with a ‘check-out’. The check-in and check-out rounds consist of participants taking turns to share their thoughts and feelings. In the case of check-in, what is shared centres on what the participant ‘brings along’ to the meeting; the emotional and cognitive contents they carry with them at that moment. For instance, they frequently refer to the constant stress involved in trying to secure a livelihood through entrepreneurial activism. In ‘check-out’, the participants focus on how the meeting has affected them and what they take away with them from the meeting. These practices are in a sense superfluous to the official agenda of the meeting. Instead of involving discussions of the matters to be dealt with, they centre around freely expressing the personal lives and thoughts of the participants. Yet it is not free in the sense of a spontaneous discussion without a theme or direction, but a tekhne with a specific aim in the cultivation of a specific form of ‘presence’. For instance, in the check-in round one’s experiences are expressed so that they can be put aside, and one can focus on the agenda of the meeting.

Superficially, this sharing is reminiscent of the pastoral practices of confession Foucault (2021) analyses. It is expected that the participants reflect on how their lives are going and then confess these reflections to the group. As such, this sharing establishes a ‘relay of power’ (Binkley, 2014: 38) a hinge of sorts which both separates and connects the private and personal from the public and shared. This practice celebrates each and everyone’s unique thought and allows it ‘free’ expression, but also opens the private sphere to collective examination and power relations (see e.g. Fejes and Dahlstedt, 2013). However, check-in and check-out do not straightforwardly manifest the shepherd-flock and confessional relations characteristic of pastoral power, as the expectation of speech and listening targets everyone equally. These technologies are entrance and exit rituals intended to delimit how subjects enter into relation with and become present to one another and how they can free themselves from restrictions and distractions from inside and outside forces. In this, they draw a double border between the group and its external world on the one hand and, on the other hand, an internal border between the subjectivities (identities, thoughts, affects) which are allowed to be ‘present’ in the situation and which are to be left outside for the duration of the meeting.

This bordering of presence and absence is also revealed in contemplative exercises wherein the subject leaves certain parts of the self and its surroundings in order to be ‘present’ and ‘free’ from inner restrictions. Frequent technologies among the Gardeners are mindfulness and similar meditation exercises. Originally a Buddhist form of meditation, mindfulness is a practice of focusing on the present moment, allowing all one’s own thoughts and feelings to freely rise and disappear without clinging to them (Williams and Kabat-Zinn, 2013). For Scharmer, mindfulness can disrupt the quotidian cognitive framework of constantly criticizing things and help ‘wake up with fresh eyes to see the environment’ (Scharmer, 2018: 24). In the first larger Gardener group virtual meeting we attended, the event began not with a check-in round, but with a short mindfulness exercise. Participants first find a comfortable posture. They are then told to relax, focus on the breath and then allow any thoughts and feelings to come and go spontaneously. Another exercise the Gardeners report using is ‘encounter meditation,’ a pair exercise which involves sitting still and quiet for a couple of minutes while looking the partner in the eye (M1). These are considered easy ‘low threshold’ (M1) exercises for everyone.

A quote from Maria highlights the function of meditation as anakhoresis as it is to cut off thoughts and feelings from one’s quotidian life in order to be more ‘present’ and free from mental distractions:

Meditation is crucial in my opinion, because [it] somehow cleanses the mind of everything else, so when you come into a space or you come into a meeting you have all the residue from the previous task and everything, you are still on shopping lists and such, that we really take the time for being here and now and doing this, and we are not doing a million things at once, which is a very normal state of being – at least for myself. So you get into this that ‘hey now we need do nothing but this’, so they have been very useful. (Maria, II)

Such practices are seen as establishing subjective autonomy over those mental processes which make one an automaton of sorts. Jesse claims that through meditation, ‘you avoid a certain pushing, or going forging ahead while being entirely blocked, or somehow going forward in a terribly reflex-based, reactive mode’ (Jesse, II).

These quotes highlight a complex ambiguity or tension between presence and absence in the relation between subjective autonomy and knowledge. This was already present in the Christian self-examination-confession practices depicted above. To truly know one’s self and become autonomous entails being truly present to reality in body and mind. But then again, becoming present requires pre-existing markers that differentiate what is ‘true’ in one’s own mind and conducive to becoming present, from those contents which are not truly ‘me’ and ‘present’ (and which may even be evil, as in Christian self-examination). In other words, the ambiguity leaves open the question of how the subjects can step out of their own point of view to draw a line between problematic and justified modes of thinking and feeling if they are to remain radically open to all modes of perception, as e.g. mindfulness suggests. How can subjects be truly free if the conditions for identifying true freedom from heteronomy are already established?

In sum, the Gardeners utilize several collective technologies of the self – check-in and check-out rounds, meditation – that perform anakhoresis to distance themselves from habitual modes of thought and to become more ‘present’ to what is real and of importance. These technologies imbue the ambiguity between autonomy and heteronomy: of being truly free and self-directing on the one hand, and being governed from the outside, on the other hand. These also leave open the distinctions between the contents of one’s mind that can be recognized as one’s own, autonomous thinking and what is insidiously determined from outside. These ambiguities do not so much mark a weakness but an inherent aspect in critical attitude in its attempts to question, bracket, destabilise or deconstruct existing ways of thinking.

Metanoia: Becoming a subject through becoming no-one

Practices of metanoia include an intensive subjective transformation as precondition to truth and salvation. Christian self-examination introduced metanoia in the principle of renouncing one’s sinful past and residual impure desires and thoughts. ‘[T]he soul does a complete turnaround, inverts all its values, and changes in every respect’ (Foucault, 2021: 77). Eventually, this transformation became an incessant exercise, ‘a starting point and a general form of Christian life’ (ibid.: 60). In monasticism, this may reach its pinnacle in a radical de-subjectivation, a union (Lat. unitio, Gr. theosis) with a divine entity, where the traces of personal and altogether human existence are momentarily effaced (ibid.).

With early Christianity, care of the self thus became linked to an ambiguity between subjectivity and de-subjectivation: total transformation and relinquishing of one’s own subjectivity as the prerequisite for the ability to acquire more authentic subjectivity and to live in truth (Foucault, 2001a). Since the Middle Ages, practices of subjective transformation have radiated from religious forms of life and come to characterize secular social theories and movements (Foucault, 1997b, 2001a). This can also be witnessed in the history of radical SMOs, some of which explicitly draw on Christian religious traditions as noted by Munro (2014). A striking example is the controlled use of psychoactive substances like LSD in the mid- and late 20th century as a precondition for becoming a politically radical subject among activist groups like the Weathermen and the Black Panthers. Allegedly psychedelic experiences would aid in renouncing lingering bourgeois attachments within oneself (Elcock, 2015.)

While nothing so radical occurs in the Gardeners’ use of Theory U, there is a tendency to link truthful, ethically valorized organizational identities to subjective transformation by renouncing ‘egocentric’ views and opening up to systemic, ‘ecocentric’ state, where knowledge has no subject or owner, and perceiving has no specific point of view (Scharmer, 2018; Scharmer and Yukelson, 2015). Allegedly, this is a central condition for reaching the afore-mentioned ‘source’ from which new ideas emerge (Scharmer, 2018).

The Gardeners rarely use the term ‘source’ found in Theory U, but their notion of ‘soil’ is an equivalent mental state and mode of being together and is accorded paramount importance in their practices (Saari et al., 2022). Throughout the data all four members of the group made numerous references to ‘soil’ as key to what their group is all about. Calling themselves ‘cultural gardeners’, they came to understand their role in the change towards a more sustainable world as the ones ‘who work on the soil so that a prototype for some kind of new thinking emerges there’ (Maria, GI). Preparing the soil refers to probing the pre-subjective fabric or basis from which truly important questions and authentically new, creative ideas arise (Emil, GI).

When reflecting on how the group engages with the broader society as a group of entrepreneurs marketing their product, soil is scaled to be potentially inclusive of whomever. As one Gardener retorted, you are welcome ‘even if you’re a fucking Nazi!’ (Emil, group meeting). All it takes is the willingness to check one’s own identities, political ideas and habitual trains of thought in the cloak room. As a group, the Gardeners felt they had the aim and responsibility to reach out to all members of the urban community. As they see organizations focusing on ecological and social justice often connected to ‘green’ and ‘socialist’ ideologies, they want to avoid such associations as potentially ‘alienating’ to the wider public and leading to a ‘quicksand of ideological debate’ (GM 1). They frequently use caricatures of a ‘right wing populist’ and a ‘hockey player’ as touchstones: would they relate to, understand and appreciate the Gardeners’ language, approaches and methods?

Thus, the role of the ‘soil’ is to provide a (safe) space where old identifications can be relinquished and new identifications shared by all can emerge. As the Gardeners put it, there has to be a possibility for asking, again and again, ‘who are we’, and ‘why are we’ (GM1). Group identity, a sense of ‘us’, is often created in SMOs through collective action such as gathering in demonstrations, chanting slogans and theses or listening to speeches (Ross, 2002; cf. the second ascesis in Munro, 2014). However, a shared identity can also be created by disidentification (Muñoz, 1999); by renouncing socially dominant identities with meagre potential for action, recognition and self-worth, and finding performative ways of existing otherwise (see Cherry, 2019). With the help of Theory U, the Gardeners seek to construct ‘tolerant identities’ (Ross, 2002; Della Porta, 2005) where the organization is potentially open to everyone. What occurs here is a combination of disidentification and identification: For Theory U, the downward bend of the U curve amounts to relinquishing old identities, whereas the upward bend of the U amounts to discovering new identifications. The nexus between the two is the ‘source’ which is equated with encountering the existential question ‘who is my Self?’ (Scharmer, 2018: 38).

When speaking about the practices which allow access to the ‘soil’, Emil uses metaphors indicating a loss of rational ego, and to an unspecific agential and volitional entity establishing identities and aims. As individuals and as a group, one has to ‘let come’ and ‘let go’ of ideological mindsets, as ‘essential things are found in the margins and by surprise’ (Emil, GM 1).

For me, the solution comes through mycelium-like listening, sensing. You systematically take the level of sensing deeper and deeper, until you get to the point which is the bottom of the U, where you already sense [ - - ] giving, trusting your intuition and trusting what all  our shared sensing, sensed and perceived, what it tells us of the future. What it tells us about what wants to emerge in the future. (Emil, GI)

Equally evocative of metanoia are expressions referring to an uncomfortable but eventually rewarding leap of faith demanded by many of the exercises they have used. The group members reported entering a ‘crackpot level’ or ‘hippie level’, which refers to encountering something difficult to put into words. The Gardeners systematically urge each other to engage in free, uninhibited speech not confined by the need to ‘make sense’.

In the meetings, even a very intuitive speech has been entirely allowed. There has been such a social space there that we can go ahead and grope our way towards an unknown field...in our meetings we have visited hippie levels, as we have started from a foggy ground to put stuff into words (Jesse, GI)

With the Gardeners, reaching the soil is not a mystical rapture, but a material and symbolic suspension of one’s own stable point of view and habitual links between thought and action, which can be realized through certain practices. From Theory U, the Gardeners have culled so-called 3D and 4D modelling, adding and adjusting these to their own existing practices. 3D modelling means constructing material three dimensional models of an organization or an environment (Scharmer, 2018: 74). 4D refers to ‘social presencing theatre’ (Scharmer, 2018: 73). It entails participants acting different roles – including their values, forms of thinking – within an organization or the broader society. It is another way of bracketing one’s fixed viewpoint. 4D is particularly important practice for Maria, who has a background in theatre and drama pedagogy.

We take up 3D for closer scrutiny. In a meeting, the Gardeners showed a model of a city they had constructed for another project. The base was made of cardboard and papier maché, covered with a motley of movable objects standing for different material and social structures, stakeholders and interests. The idea is to contemplate the object from many angles, randomly moving different objects to different locations. Ideally, this will multiply perspectives and cultivate new ideas and plans of action:

I think that this shows in a certain way more generally the potential of material thought. That when you think about things, not through discourse but through… any material whatsoever… you can potentially bring to the table things that are entirely incommensurable with each other: you can have the primordial egg and an oil pipe and municipal bureaucracy and some eco-village (Laura, II). 

This also involves a detachment from given physical vantage points, personal preferences or even the limits of linguistic representation:

When you start to look at it without judging things as good or bad or not giving them value from the outside...you start to see the effect one thing as on another...so when you look at it from here you don’t see everything, you don’t see the same things you see from another angle... If we are talking about Nazis or ice-hockey players we are talking about others, or we are rather talking about something we experience as strange, because we have named it like that… so with a name. So there is [in material thinking] some kind of potential for experiencing a sort of connection with each other: sharing something even if we speak of the world in different words. (Laura, II)

Technologies of the self may thus reach a point of de-subjectivation, not as an experience of losing one’s sense of self, but in the form of divestment from preference, values, physical standpoint, and, momentarily, even language (see also Harrebye, 2016: 125-127; Leggett, 2022). 

The result is a new, non-individual entity, a new kind of soil from which new type of thought and finally, action, emerge: 

The aim here is to shape the soil so that a prototype of some new kind of thinking emerges, which can then be tested in practice. (Maria, GI) 

It often happens that the paradigms actually determine the answer. But as soon as the paradigm universe is much more fluid or mobile, so the results that can be obtained, the sphere is much wider. (Jesse GI)

Metanoia is an example of afore-mentioned ‘risky’ technologies of the self where one’s subjectivity is profoundly questioned. What drives such technologies is the perceived restriction that existing forms of subjective existence pose to ethically valorized action and identities. These technologies are risky in the sense that there are no guarantees just what will happen once they are adopted. Thus, they require collective trust and a ‘leap of faith’ into something unknown. As such they involve a peculiar, positioning towards internalized relations of power-knowledge – of renouncing what one thinks, what one is and what one knows. These technologies thus seek to suspend the hold of existing ways of being governed in the name of certain goals, knowledges and identities – not to enable anarchy, but to open space for different ways of governing and being governed (Foucault, 1997b).

Conclusion: An undecided space

Our aim in this article has been to contribute to critical organization studies by highlighting the technologies of the self entrepreneurial activists employ in questioning their habitual forms of thought and action. This connects with the recent focus in Foucauldian organization studies on the potentialities of subjective agency and autonomy: Subjects are not seen as passive receptacles of dominant strategies and tactics of government, but actively taking up, mixing, diverting and inventing new practices for changing exigencies (Villadsen, 2021). Our analysis contributes to this tradition (Munro, 2014; Weiskopf and Willmott, 2013) by opening discussion of those reflective practices through which a critical attitude towards existing aims, means and ontologies of governing can become manifest. These practices make possible the freedom to act otherwise (Harrebye, 2016; Palacios, 2018; Rowe 2016). Further, we have highlighted how the social nature of these practices leads to productive tensions between the autonomy of the participants and the requirements of the group (see also Brewis, 2019; Leggett, 2021).

In empirical terms, our argument shows the presence of two types of specific technologies utilized by the Gardeners in their critical attitude: 1) technologies of anakhoresis, including the rounds of check-in/check-out and exercises of mindfulness/meditation intended to distance and free the members of the group from their habitual modes of thought, and 2) technologies of metanoia, which include 3D and 4D modelling and the acceptability of intuitive speech intended to transform the individuals and the group. These technologies house ambiguities related to autonomy and subjectivity which have the potential to render inoperable existing organizational identities, aims and forms of thought.

We therefore suggest that these technologies create an ‘undecided space’ (Bevir, 1999; Iedema and Rhodes, 2010) where subjects make themselves susceptible to transformation. Undecided spaces are areas where individual and collective work is done in order to be governed differently, by different governors and for different objectives. By studying these spaces, the study of SMOs can gain an attunement to aporias and tensions that inhabit them. This undecidedness is visible especially in anakhoresis and metanoia: the tension between absence and presence as well as between being a definitive subject and being divested of identities, values and forms of thought. As a result, it is not possible to fix the positions of governor and governed, conduct or counter-conduct in this space. Rather, the practices of such a space seek contact with a ground (‘soil’, ‘the source’) from which new identities, and forms of thought and action are expected to emerge.

Our approach on an undecided space also exhibits a particular temporal framing seldom used in Foucauldian organization studies and studies of SMOs therein. While research on care of the self frequently analyzes organizations wherein a decision how to be governed otherwise has already been made (see e.g. Moisander and Pesonen 2002; Chatzidakis et al., 2012; Munro, 2014; Rossdale and Stierl, 2016), we have focussed on technologies used specifically to effect a sort of anterior change that precedes and grounds new ways of governing and being governed. We suspect that such technologies have an indispensable position in creating the critical potential of SMOs; paraphrazing Foucault (2001b: 456), they allow SMOs to ‘uncover and change the thought that drives (their) everyday behaviours’. However, given the limited scope of our data, more research is needed to explore this issue further.

The focus on undecided spaces may prove especially useful in furthering the study of the organizational make-up of entrepreneurial activist groups not easily contextualized into either neoliberal governmental strategies or forms of resistance, either reified conduct of conduct or insurgent counter-conduct. Technologies of the self in organizations are easily framed in critical organization studies as co-opted by or having ‘an uncomfortable structural proximity to the neoliberal governance of individuals through organized self-realization’ (McNay 2009: 72; see also Saari and Harni, 2016). We have deliberately sought to bypass such contextualizations here. Instead, we suggest that undecided spaces hold value in themselves, irrespective of what types of counter conduct or conduct of conduct they may resolve into (see also Pickerill and Chatterton, 2006). In other words, undecided spaces express ‘tactical polyvalence (Foucault, 1978; see also Munro, 2014). This means that, for example, the practices of anakhoresis and metanoia studied here may create potential for effortlessly mobilizing, developing, problematizing and relaying multiple forms of conduct in relation to a wide array of societal aims. Thus, ambiguities assume a practical position, wherein they are not a paradox to be solved, but a distinctive feature of thought as the space for something radically new to emerge.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by Kone Foundation, grant number 201901792.