Critical Performativity and Embodied Performing as materio-socio-cultural Practices – Phenomenological Perspectives on performative Bodies at work

Abstract

One of the most elementary way in which members in organisations are involved in their performances are their embodied and expressed relations and interactions. The paper shows how phenomenology can help to render explicit these incorporated experiences and dimensions of performances in organizational life-worlds. Particularly, Merleau-Ponty`s phenomenology allows to understand the interlacing role of body-related, interrelations of performing processes in and through organising. These embodied dimensions of performance will be demonstrated by examples of performative bodies at work. By concluding some perspectives on embodied performing in organisation are offered.