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Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry

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Year 2004 
Volume 3 
Issue 4

Technology, Text, Subject: ‘After’ the Human

Chris Land
University of Essex

2004 3 (4) Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry

Abstract

Recent theories of technology have argued that in order to take constructivism seriously we need to understand technologies as organizational texts, replacing the study of technological artefacts with an appreciation of the ways in which these ‘texts’ are read, or interpreted, in specific situations. Whilst such approaches offer an effective critique of determinism in explanations of technological change, they also raise some interesting questions around the nature of the human subject which have been given a less comprehensive treatment in the literature. This paper contributes to the development of a thoroughgoing antiessentialism in theories of technology and organization by considering Deleuze and Guattari’s radical constructionist critique of the subject. Placing the technocentric metaphor of ‘the machine’ at the heart of subjectivization, Deleuze and Guattari’s decentring of the human subject offers a fully symmetrical anti-essentialism, capable of accounting for the non-human forces at work in the constitution of human subjectivity.

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APA style

Land, Chris (2004). Technology, Text, Subject: ‘After’ the Human. (2004). Technology, Text, Subject: ‘After’ the Human. Tamara: Journal For Critical Organization Inquiry, 3(4), 23-35. (Original work published 2004)

MLA style

Land, Chris. “Technology, Text, Subject: ‘After’ The Human”. 2004. Tamara: Journal For Critical Organization Inquiry, vol. 3, no. 4, 2004, pp. 23-35.

Chicago style

Land, Chris. “Technology, Text, Subject: ‘After’ The Human”. Tamara: Journal For Critical Organization Inquiry, Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, 3, no. 4 (2004): 23-35.