At war with oneself: Self-alienation at work

Jana Costas, University of Cambridge

This paper seeks to contribute to contemporary debates about employee dis-identification by reviving the concept of self-alienation. The literature exploring dis-identification has pointed out how employees use strategies of role distancing to detach themselves from the ‘colonizing’ corporate culture programmes and lifestyles. While theories of dis-identification are useful in cases where employees are able to construct a separate, ‘authentic’ and ‘imaginary’ narrative of selfhood, it is proposed that what also needs to be explained is when this narrative itself becomes alien to oneself. By providing an illustrative example of the consultant Paul, I show how drawing on the idea of self-alienation is advantageous in capturing such asignifying workplace experiences, especially in an era of blurring work and non-work boundaries and management trends towards techniques of ‘neo-normative’ control. The concept of alienation has a long and diverse history in social theory, but given the essentialist baggage of its traditional Marxist notion it has almost disappeared in critical discussions about employment, self and power. In light of both the postmodern criticism and the changing nature of management practices in contemporary organizations, I attempt to revise the concept in order to demonstrate employees’ estrangement apropos their ‘imaginary real’ self. The implications that self-alienation has for critically studying the uprising corporate cultures programmes and employee identification processes are raised.