Can the Subaltern Teach? Performativity Otherwise Through Anthropophagy ^☆

The title is inspired by Spivak “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1985).

Abstract

Purpose

We engage in a particular way the Anglo-American claim that a more performative Critical Management Studies (CMS) is needed to foster transformations in the “world out there” by putting into practice our learnings from a case study at Galpão Aplauso (GA), an NGO located in Brazil, which main role is to (re)socialize dispossessed youngsters through a critical methodology informed by anthropophagy.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing upon an engaged investigation informed by both performative CMS and decoloniality from Latin America we embody a performative CMS “otherwise.” Through the engagement with GA, and corresponding disengagement with our institutions, we propose decolonial anthropophagy as a way to move beyond Eurocentric critiques of Eurocentrism and decolonial work monopolized by full-time academics.

Findings

From a decolonial perspective it is shown that the performative turn within CMS could be used as a way of bringing “critical development” and “critical knowledge” to “subalterns” and the “rest of the world” from a perspective of coloniality. An anthropofagic perspective on decoloniality and critique shows that “subalterns” have much to teach us and our institutions and represents a way to decolonize theory-practice and academic-nonacademic divides.

Originality/value

The critical-decolonial anthropophagic perspective put forward in this chapter may represent an opportunity for CMS to move beyond much of its Eurocentric traditions, thus enlarging its geographic and cultural references. It may offer CMS an alternative critical performativity concept from the South which enables CMS to become a “re/disconnector,” instead of a connector, between the Euro-American traditions and the “rest of the world,” and making things happen “otherwise.”

Citation

Faria, A., Wanderley, S., Reis, Y. and Celano, A. (2014), "Can the Subaltern Teach? Performativity Otherwise Through Anthropophagy ^☆

The title is inspired by Spivak “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1985).

", Getting Things Done (Dialogues in Critical Management Studies, Vol. 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 205-224. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2046-6072(2013)0000002015