Representations of secretarial resistance: Complementarity, alterity, and ambivalence

Patricia J Sotirin, Purdue University

Abstract

This study develops a terminological critique of the representation of workplace resistance in organizational studies and studies of office women's resistance. It engages the struggle over representation that is implicit in efforts to represent the specificities of women's workplace resistance. Such efforts are hampered by the analogic structure of representation that characterizes the term resistance. An analogic term is one that entails a common reference across diverse uses. The common reference across uses of resistance is distinguished etymologically as "op-position," a particular sense of opposition which involves the antagonistic play of forces between polarized positions. The study demonstrates the prevalence of such a sense of "op-position" in studies of workplace resistance and secretarial and clerical women 's resistance. Two representational configurations are identified: one that starts with the exercise of force and represents resistance as its complement (complementarity) and one that starts with the exercise of counterforce and represents resistance as radically other (alterity). Although these representations might appear different, they affirm the analogic structure that binds the sense of resistance to op-position. Poststructuralist perspectives have argued for the instability of analogic form and feminist theory has embraced such instability theoretically and politically. The concept of ambivalence figures critically in such arguments. Ambivalence is a way of unsettling the ensconsed meanings and representational practices that have limited resistance to a politics of fixed "op-positions." A model of secretarial positioning offers a grounded illustration of the ideological closure effected in the presumption of stability in the analogic structure and a reconsideration of the practice of bitching suggests how a movement of ambivalence effects resistance to such analogic assurances. The study urges organizational scholars to take issue not only with common sense meanings but with the forms of representation that configure those meanings in a given context.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Stohl, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Communication|Labor relations|Womens studies

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