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Fantasies of revelation, revolution and management: A Voegelinian classical diagnosis of three related domains

University College Cork, j.fairhead{at}ucc.ie

This article draws from the work of political philosopher Eric Voegelin to suggest that much of what passes for organizational reality draws inspiration from cognate historical fantasies of revelation and revolution. All three areas, in this view, have a tendency to turn into a revolt against reality, whereby reality is re-defined through acts of truncation and exaggerated reification (or hypostatization) in a quite revolutionar y manner. More particularly, drawing also from psycho-analysis and other works of sociology and political philosophy, the ar ticle draws attention to a number of themes by which managerial revolts against reality can quite readily be identified. In so doing, the article suggests that what is new in contemporary management discourse is not so much its revolutionary attempt to redefine reality (a distinguishing feature, arguably, of any ideology) but only the confidence and overtness with which narcissistic and totalizing managerialist fantasies are nowadays proclaimed, a prelude, perhaps, to their being more widely seen for what they are, and a corrective deflation.

Key Words: fantasy • knowledge management • leadership • narcissism • politics • psychology • religion • spirituality

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