"When the Sleeper Wakes": A Short Story Extending Themes in Radical Organization Theory

Abstract

This is a short story about the two minds of Mike Armstrong, Dialectical Marxist Theory's romantic "everyman " and Critical Theory's "anti-hero." The story contrasts day and night versions of Armstrong's worklife as a skilled operator in the control room of a large phosphate plant located in Tampa, Florida. The two versions are presented to illustrate theoretical descriptions of psychic processes engaged when human actors confront an alien world and make sense of it. Alternative forms of subjective alienation, relied consciousness (drawn from Critical Theory), and reflective militancy (drawn from Dialectical Marxism) are developed as deep psychic states through which meaning is constructed in the world. It is proposed that subjective alienation is shaped by mythical forces in the broader symbolic environment and that it profoundly conditions actions and attitudes. Its importance in understanding organizational behavior and the practice of humanistic management is discussed in terms of human meaning-making processes.

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