Feminism and Bureaucratic Discourse

In: New political science: a journal of politics & culture, Band 11, S. 53-73

Abstract

An investigation of the influence of bureaucratic language in corporate organization, & the responses of liberal & radical feminists to this influence. Through Michel Foucault's analysis of speech & power, organizational discourse is demonstrated to be normative, eg, as in the bureaucratic category of personnel management. A review of recent literature on personnel management reveals a four-pronged process of legitimation through which discourse reflects a hierarchy of power: (1) Workers are described as objects to be manipulated for the needs of the organization. (2) The personnel bureaucracy has established legitimacy by describing itself as a resource for other bureaucracies. (3) Problems are described as resulting from misallocation of individuals, rather than from the organizational structure. (4) The discourse effectively establishes the organizational structure as unalterable by co-opting terms that suggest change -- a process that may also be called "mystification." The liberal feminist response involves accepting existing organizational structures & formulating strategies for integrating women into them, albeit with the codicil that such game-playing is infantile, if necessary. The radical response recognizes the price paid by those who are voluntarily subsumed in the organizational system, & eschews it, preferring to form antibureaucratic structures that stress egalitarian values & shared resources. A. Padgett.