Managing complexity
the "literary turn" in organization studies
pp. 181-195
in: Martin Middeke, Christoph Reinfandt (eds), Theory matters, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
The relevance, indeed the necessity of literary theory for reading and studying texts and culture at large is no longer seriously contested (see Bode 87). A number of publications looking at literary studies "after theory' (Eagleton) or at "theory after theory' (Birns) were partly a bet on the attention-catching provocation inherent in such announcements and partly a (more modest) stock-taking of an era dominated by systematically oriented, self-reflexive theory debates in the wake of the linguistic turn. Theoretical debates have moved on towards other concerns but not away from theory altogether. At the present moment, the plurality of theories and approaches in literary and cultural studies, and their constantly expanding fields of application once more raise the question of where to draw the disciplinary boundaries of literary studies.