Difference and interruption in research accounts

SummaryOrganizational research often constructs the relation between the researcher and the researched as either an ‘interrogation’ or a ‘conversation’. Despite important differences, both modes of engagement with the object of research understand the ‘otherness’ of the object through its unity with the ‘self’ of the researcher. This invites the effacement of differences between the two rather than their exploration. The work of the writer and literary theorist Maurice Blanchot [Blanchot, M. (1993). The Infinite Conversation (S. Hanson, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; Blanchot, M. (1997). Awaiting Oblivion (J. Gregg, Trans.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press], little known in the organizational research literature, suggests an antidote to this type of research relation. By foregrounding difference as the basis of the self–other relation, Blanchot invites us to see the researched other as non-reducible to researcher, and to treat gaps and failures of understanding between them as productive rather than flawed parts of a research relation. Attention to difference problematises the practice of writing as a space where otherness can be usefully explored rather than obviated. This proposition is examined through examples of organizational research.