Management in/as Comic Relief: Queer Theory and Gender Performativity in The Office

Management in/as Comic Relief:Queer Theory and GenderPerformativity in The Office

Melissa Tyler* and Laurie Cohen

Our discussion here focuses on gender performativity — the evocation ofgender through stylized modes of interaction and the recitation of particu-lar cultural norms — in the BBC comedy series The Office. We suggest thatThe Office can be read as a cultural text that brings sedimented ways ofthinking about and enacting gender into relief, a technique that effectively‘queers’ management and organization as gendered phenomena. In doingso, we argue that not only does The Office parody the ways in whichmanagement is configured according to the terms of what Judith Butler hasdescribed as the ‘heterosexual matrix’, but that it also represents a parodiccritique of the gendered ways in which this configuration is enacted ineveryday organizational encounters. We also suggest that, in addition to itscapacity to be read as a parody of gender performativity, The Office reflectsqueer theory’s concern, particularly as the latter has been articulated inButler’s writing, to reveal something of the pathos inherent in the desirefor recognition that underpins the hegemonic performance of gender. Inthis respect, our reading of The Office emphasizes that, as a popular cul-tural text, it throws into (comic) relief the extent to which the desire forrecognition underpins the organizational performance and management ofgender in accordance with the terms of the heterosexual matrix.

Keywords: The Office, queer theory, Judith Butler, gender performativity,parody

Introduction

Laughter in the face of serious categories is indispensable for feminism.(Butler, 2000 [1990], p. xxviii)

Laughter and parody provide the opportunity for a compelling critique ofmodern organizations. (Rhodes, 2001, p. 375)

Address for correspondence: *Melissa Tyler, The Business School, Loughborough University,Ashby Road, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, e-mail: [email protected]

Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 15 No. 2 March 2008doi:10.1111/j.1468-0432.2007.00351.x

© 2007 The Author(s)Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

mailto:[email protected]

The focus of our discussion here is the multi-award-winning BBC comedyseries The Office. We argue that, in its emphasis on both the performance

and parody of gender, The Office can be read as a popular cultural text thatexemplifies many of the critical insights, as well as some of the limitations, ofqueer theory. In examining some of the gendered aspects of The Office, wedraw particularly on the work of Judith Butler (1988, 1993, 2000, 2004), who isoften thought of (much to her own surprise it seems — see Butler, 2000, p. vii,and Osborne and Segal, 1994, pp. 1–2) as one of the founders of queer theory.We also draw upon recent attempts to use Butler’s work to articulate aqueering of management (Parker, 2002a) and to develop Butler’s phenom-enological understanding of the organizational constitution of the subject(Borgerson, 2005). In particular, we attempt to tease out from both Butler’swork and The Office a critical emphasis on the gendered organization of thedesire for recognition. By this we mean the configuration of our need forforms of social interaction that acknowledge and respond to the ways inwhich we perform and present our gendered selves according to the terms ofthe heterosexual matrix.1 We suggest that this central theme in The Office isshaped in large part by the hegemonic performance of gender, and is playedout particularly in the perpetual identity crisis of the lead character, DavidBrent.

Our discussion of The Office as a cultural text therefore focuses on theways in which it brings the gender performativity of organizational life tothe fore. We argue that in doing so, it simultaneously plays out and playswith what Butler (2000) has described as the heterosexual matrix; anontological–epistemic schema that frames particular (binary and hierarchi-cal) configurations of the relationship between sex, gender and desire asnormative and pre-social, as ‘serious categories’. With this in mind, our aimhere is to bring the critical interrogation of management and organization inThe Office to bear on the feminist critique of the heterosexual matrix, focus-ing attention particularly on hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity,and more specifically, on the gendered organization and management of thedesire for recognition.

First broadcast in the UK in 2001 and written by Ricky Gervais and StephenMerchant, The Office is set in the (fictitious) Slough branch of paper merchant,Wernham Hogg. Its spoof, ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary style focuses prima-rily on five main characters — self-obsessed general manager David Brent(played by Gervais); Brent’s ‘right hand man’, the petty and pedantic Gareth;Tim (trapped between the two of them and clearly desperate to escape) andthe receptionist, Dawn, who is caught up in something of a bizarre lovetriangle involving Tim and her boyfriend Lee (who works in the warehouse).The fifth main character in the first series is David’s boss Jennifer, whomanages both the Swindon and the Slough branches of Wernham Hogg, untilthe two branches merge at the beginning of Series Two and several othercharacters are introduced, the main one being Brent’s new boss, Neil (who,

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prior to the merger, was his equivalent at Swindon). Neil is ‘Brent’s worstnightmare: younger, better looking, multi-skilled — and here’s the killer —more popular’ (Gervais and Merchant, 2003, back cover).

The mockumentary style of The Office means that there is a discernibledifference between the way in which the characters behave when they areseemingly being ‘caught’ on film as opposed to when they are purportedlyplaying to the camera, as they do most of the time. There are also several‘talking head’ moments in each episode when, with the exceptions of Neiland Jennifer, the main characters address the camera directly.

The first series consists of six episodes in which much of the humourderives from mundane observations of office life, but particularly so fromBrent’s desperation to be both popular, ‘one of the lads’, and at the same timerevered for his (self-professed) managerial acumen and charismatic style ofleadership. In the second series (also consisting of six episodes), the twobranches of Wernham Hogg merge and the staff from Swindon are relocatedto Slough. Brent is charged with assimilating the new staff and is presentedwith a group of seemingly well-trained and motivated people, a situation hismanagement style quickly manages to ‘undo’ (Butler, 2004). In the course ofthis series Brent himself is ‘undone’ — sacked for incompetence by his bossesJennifer and Neil. The final installment of The Office consists of two Christmasspecials, first broadcast in the UK in 2003 in which, following an undignifiedexit at the end of Series Two, Brent returns to Wernham Hogg for the officeChristmas party.

We begin our analysis of The Office from the premise that popular cultureis a fundamental part of the social landscape that shapes our perceptions andexperiences of organizational life. In this sense, it represents both an impor-tant site and a significant opportunity for critical and reflexive engagementwith management (Czarniawska, 2006; Czarniawska and Rhodes, 2004;Hassard and Holliday, 1998; Rhodes, 2001; Rhodes and Brown, 2005; West-wood and Rhodes, 2007). We start out by recalling some of the main theo-retical concerns of queer theory, largely but not exclusively (and by no meansexhaustively) through a discussion of Butler’s writing on gender performa-tivity and parody. We then explore the emphasis queer theory places on aperformative ontology of gender; that is, on the way gendered subjectivitiescome into being through iterations and recitations of gendered gestures,particularly with reference to Butler’s work and its de-naturalizing impetus.Queer theory, as it is developed in her writing, sets out to reveal the ways inwhich the construction of a seamless, organized identity demands a continu-ous, reiterative performance and a process of constant recitation.

Queer theory is then examined as a mode of critique, one that potentiallyopens up ways of exposing and challenging the gendered performance ofmanagement and organization. Mindful of the artificial nature of separatingout recurrent themes for the purposes of analysis, we then attempt to teaseout some of the main characteristics of queer theory as these are developed in

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The Office, namely a performative ontology of gender; a critique of the het-erosexual matrix; an underlying concern with the desire for recognition anda politics of parody. Our aim here is to highlight some of the ways in which,as a cultural text, The Office parodies particular modes of organizational per-formance as these are driven by the desire for recognition and enactedaccording to the terms of the heterosexual matrix. In the final part of ourdiscussion, we consider some of the insights and well as the limitations ofqueer theory as a mode of critique, and of positing The Office as a critical textin this way. Here we take Knights and Kerfoot’s (2004, p. 430) observation that‘gender analysis can only deconstruct the hierarchical content of the genderbinary by disrupting masculine hegemony at work’ as our point of departure,and argue that The Office can be read as something of a disruptive text in thisrespect.2

In conclusion, we suggest that because of its emphasis on self-parody TheOffice might be thought of as an example of what media cultural theoristssuch as Inglis (1988) have described as ‘popular cultural critique’; one thatparallels more academic or activist forms of critical engagement with man-agement in the way in which it encourages a reflexive and ambivalent critiqueof contemporary managerialism3 (see also Mills, 2001, Morreall, 1983 and,more recently, Westwood and Rhodes, 2007, for a discussion of the radicalpotential of humour in this respect). Here we echo earlier analyses of popularculture as a site of critical interrogation and ambivalence in relation to man-agement and organization (Czarniawska, 1999; Hassard and Holliday, 1998;Parker, 2002b; Rhodes, 2001; Rhodes and Brown, 2005; Smith et al., 2001).

Gender performativity, parody and ‘doing management’

Despite its growing impact on social and cultural thought, queer theory —which derives largely from an interplay of lesbian and gay studies, feministtheory, phenomenology and post-structuralism — seems to have made only arelatively limited impression thus far on the ways in which we think aboutmanagement and organizations (see Gibson-Graham, 1996; Parker, 2002a). Atthe same time, queer theorists have rarely turned their attention to the work-place (see Greenberg and Bystryn, 1996 for a notable exception). As Borgerson(2005, p. 65) has noted, ‘although often critical of legitimating institutions ...Butler rarely discusses business or management and organization issues perse’.4 Yet as she also puts it, specific concepts from her writing such as perfor-mativity and iteration ‘have profound implications for organization theory’(Borgerson, 2005, p. 64).5

At it simplest level, queer theory problematizes essentialist identity cat-egories and represents a radical opposition to hegemonic normativity; that is,to the dominant norms shaping the conferment or denial of recognition. Thisoften (but by no means universally or exclusively) involves advocating a



politics of parody. In many ways, the relatively recent appearance of queertheory on the intellectual landscape represents something of a consolidationand continuation of social constructionist and post-structuralist ideas con-cerning the social constitution of the subject. Queer theory has come to beassociated particularly with the feminist deconstruction of sex and gender, aswell as (in Butler’s writing particularly) a Hegelian philosophy of intersub-jectivity and a phenomenological theory of action, one that seeks to explain‘the mundane way in which social agents constitute social reality throughlanguage, gesture, and all manner of symbolic social signs’ (Butler, 1988, p.519, original emphasis). In this sense, queer theory involves ‘denaturalizingthe unremarked category’ (Sherry, 2004), bringing to account, so to speak, thatwhich is taken to be biologically, linguistically or socially given. In thisrespect, it broadly describes ‘those gestures or analytical models which dra-matise incoherencies’ in allegedly stable subject positions and social relations(Jagose, 2000, p. 1).

Crucially, Butler’s writing, and queer theory more generally, also empha-size that performative shifts can parody dominant norms, revealing their ownperformativity. This means that, in Butler’s view, queer activities like draghave the potential to reveal the arbitrariness of conventional gender distinc-tions and identities by parodying and so undermining them. For Butler,making ‘gender trouble’ lies in the subversion of this process, in engaging ina series of parodic practices that potentially disrupt the assumed continuitythat renders certain performances or corporeal enactments effective. Forqueer theorists such as Butler, the possibility of transformation lies in expos-ing the arbitrary relationship between constitutive acts; in the subversive andexaggerated repetition of such acts, and in the possibility of engaging in adifferent sort of repetition and recitation.

The radical potential of queer therefore lies in destabilizing gender fabri-cations by playing with them in order to demonstrate their performativityand, in doing so, to parody the idea that they refer to inner essences. Butleruses her conception of gender performativity in this respect to argue that,because the compulsory repetitions governing identity are a form of socialregulation, the various acts of identity are not expressive but performativeand so can be reappropriated and reinscribed; a move that allows her toconceive of particular performances (such as drag) as practices that subvertsocial regulation. She positions drag, therefore, as a mode of resistance thatseeks both ‘to denaturalize: to reveal the fictive status of coherent identitiesand to subvert: to repeat and displace normative cultural configurations’(Glick, 2000, p. 32). For Butler, this is what constitutes the performativeontology and ultimately, the radical politics, of queer.

In his discussion of this particular aspect of Butler’s work, Parker (2002a)draws on both Butler (2000) and Sedgwick (1990) to examine the disruptivepotential of queer as a means of critical engagement with management.Parker’s version of queer is of ‘an attitude of unceasing disruptiveness’, one



that questions the espoused integrity of management; that is, the language,knowledge claims and ethics/politics of management (including its criticalversions) as an occupation, as an everyday practice and as an academicdiscipline. He argues that queer theory has, in its relatively brief history,begun to bifurcate into two versions: a ‘minority’ version which tends to bewritten by or about those who identify as transgender, transsexual or inter-sexed, or as lesbian, gay or bisexual, and a second ‘majority’ version. Thislatter approach has evolved into a more generalized form of radical socialconstructionism; one that, in his account, emphasizes the extent to which‘doing manager is playing a role’ (Parker, 2002a, p. 160); a role that has cometo be performed in accordance with a series of sedimented props, scripts,gestures and audience expectations. Emphasizing the critical potential ofqueering management, Parker suggests that a more self-conscious, reflexiveway of doing and thinking about management might be to treat it as a formof practice that, he argues, ‘would dramatically (and ironically) enact itsprovisionality, its fragility’ (Parker, 2002a, p. 160).

Seen in this light, cultural texts such as The Office have the potential tocontribute to a radical cultural critique of categories of identity such as gender,and their enactment within the confines of particular social (and organiza-tional) configurations.6 It is from this perspective that we consider The Officeand, specifically, the ways in which it plays out/with the performativity ofsubject positions configured according to the terms of the heterosexual matrix.We suggest that exploring the relationship between queer theory as a way ofthinking about gender, management and organization, and The Office as anexample of popular cultural critique places particular emphasis on theprovisionality and fragility of these subject positions and the cultural referencepoints on which they depend.

Performing gender/management in The Office

The emphasis that queer theory places on performativity represents a poten-tially radical challenge to the enduring modernist preoccupation with acoherent, stable subject emphasizing instead a concept of the self that is‘improvisational, discontinuous and processual, constituted by repetitive andstylized acts’ (Meyer, 1993, pp. 2–3). This performative ontology of gender ispremised on the conviction that gender is a corporeal style, an act, as it were,that ‘is both intentional and performative; where “performative” suggests adramatic and contingent construction of meaning’ (Butler, 2000, p. 177, origi-nal emphasis). Through acts of repetition and recitation, gender becomesritualized, the effects of which make it appear natural. Arguing that ‘thisrepetition is not performed by a subject; this repetition is what enables asubject’ (Butler, 1993, p. 95, original emphasis), Butler emphasizes that subjectpositions are continually evoked through stylized acts of repetition, through



mundane acts of gesture and inflection that, if performed in accordance withthe norms of the heterosexual matrix, result in the attribution of viable sub-jectivity. Hence, gender is performative, ‘precisely because it initiates theindividual into the subjected status of the subject’ (Butler, 1993, p. 121).Gendered identities therefore come into being only through re-iterativeperformance, ‘compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence’(Butler, 2000, p. 24).

Much of the humour in The Office arguably brings this theme of performa-tivity to the fore, through the comically exaggerated recitation of particularcultural norms in the evocation of heterosexual masculinity. In Episode Oneof the first series, for example, Brent describes Gareth as his

right-hand man: ... immediately beneath me ... ooh, as an actress said to abishop! No, he’s not. I’m not ... Tell ’em about your car and your kung fuand everything. (Gervais and Merchant, 2002, p. 37)

Both Brent and Gareth’s apparent discomfort in this scene appears to derivefrom their shared awareness of the homosexual connotations of this dialogue,and Brent’s recitation of Gareth’s interests in cars and martial arts effectivelyqueers this implied homophobia, emphasizing its performativity and sub-jecting it to an alternative, parodic reading.

The theme of performativity is also played out throughout The Office in theconstant squabbles between Gareth and Tim over the material significance ofspace and of particular artifacts (most notably Gareth’s stapler), and variousobjects that seem to function as props of organizational masculinity. Familiarartefacts gain importance, not because of their function or form, but becauseof what they seemingly represent to the characters who use them, andbecause of the gendered meanings with which they are imbued. One of themore obvious examples of this is the inflatable penis that Dawn and her fiancéLee give Tim for his birthday — a comical but also stinging reminder of Tim’sfrustrated desire for Dawn. Another is Gareth’s mobile phone holster,coupled with the constant parallels he draws between office life and his workin the territorial army. Gareth’s tales of his strength and military savvy arecontinually subverted by Tim and Dawn, who turn them into homoeroticencounters (though Gareth remains oblivious to their irony).

Through scenes such as these, The Office plays with the performative natureof organizational boundaries, particularly those relating to gender and sexu-ality. For instance, a scene in the first episode of Series One highlights theways in which organizations require what Bakhtin (1968) described as‘closed’ bodies. In an exchange that resonates with Rhodes’ (2001) analysis ofthe ‘grotesque realism’ of The Simpsons (see also Rhodes and Pullen, 2007),Brent tells Dawn about a lump he has found in his testicles while she is eating‘a bit of brie’ in a lunchtime sandwich. Several things seem to happen in thisscene, things that arguably reflect queer theory’s ability to link the performa-tivity of gender to its materialization in the body.



Firstly, the scene serves to highlight the vulnerability of Brent’s masculin-ity as well as the gendered performativity of organizational bodies and ofmanagement. This results in something of a pathos that contrasts sharply withthe following scene in which, discussing the need to make redundancies,Brent boasts that ‘information is power’ and (with Gareth) evokes a naturalselection argument in his claim to masculine and managerial prowess. Theperformativity and therefore fragility of this claim, as well as the desire bywhich it is underpinned, is emphasized by the contrasting versions of mas-culinity at stake in the two scenes.

Secondly, in breaching the boundaries between what is acceptable andwhat is not, and in effectively ‘opening up’ Brent’s body and allowing it tospill into the Wernham Hogg reception area, his performance is renderedabsurd; Brent becomes simultaneously incompetent and vulnerable, as a manand as a manager. At the same time, however, this scene is an uncomfortablemoment for Dawn, because Brent’s graphic discussion of his body’s vulner-ability (while Dawn is eating) implies that he expects her to take on, inresponse to his revelation (his literal and more metaphorical ‘opening up’), acaring, nurturing role, or simply (in a relationship of subordination) to listento his description. Brent’s masculinity is therefore simultaneously exposedand imposed, we might say.

Episode Two of Series One similarly emphasizes some of the ways inwhich the performance of gender and sexuality are organized and embodied.Here, an e-mail has been circulated depicting a downloaded pornographicimage of a woman’s body onto which Brent’s head has been superimposed.We are never shown the image itself, but rather various characters looking atcomputer monitors and discussing the image, primarily speculating aboutwho sent it.

Brent seems appalled by the degradation of women’s bodies, claiming (as hedoes in several episodes) that he ‘hates sexism’. In front of his boss, he andGareth demonstrate how easy it is to find pornography on the Internet, andread out many of the taglines from various sites, describing their disgust whiletheir gazes constantly flicker back to the PC monitor. They have clearly losttheir train of thought as Brent reads out ‘Dutch girls must be punished forhaving big boobs’ and (purportedly demonstrating his managerial sensitivityand reconstructed masculinity) makes the point that ‘you do not punishsomeone, Dutch or otherwise, for having big boobs’ (Gervais and Merchant,2002, p. 75). Somewhat paradoxically perhaps, given its apparent hetero-normativity, we might argue that this is actually a very queer scene; one thatexcruciatingly scrutinizes the performance of hegemonic masculinity andheteronormativity implicit in the exchange and which takes the circumstances,the discourse involved, and the identities at stake, so seriously that theybecome ridiculous. In effect, we might argue, it makes ‘gender trouble’ (Butler,2000) with management by bringing its performativity, and its genderedorganization according to the terms of the heterosexual matrix, to the fore.



The Office and the heterosexual matrix

Butler uses the term ‘heterosexual matrix’ to make conceptual sense of whatshe describes as ‘a self-supporting signifying economy that wields power inthe marking off of what can and cannot be thought within the terms ofcultural intelligibility’ (Butler, 2000, pp. 99–100). In her writing, the hetero-sexual matrix is a ‘masculine sexual economy’ (Butler, 2000, pp. xxx–xxxi) thatpositions men and women according to a bifurcated and hierarchical con-figuration of the relationship between sex, gender and desire, establishing‘gender categories that support gender hierarchy and compulsory hetero-sexuality’7 (Butler, 2000, p. xxviii). According to the logic of this matrix, ‘if oneidentifies as a given gender, one must desire a different gender’ (Butler, 1993,p. 239, original emphasis). The heterosexual matrix therefore enables certainidentifications, at the same time as foreclosing and disavowing others; itconfigures intelligible subjects, those that are produced ‘as a consequence ofrecognition according to prevailing social norms’ (Butler, 2004, p. 3).

Again, much of the humour in The Office parodies the cultural norms andreference points relative to which intelligible subjects are produced in accor-dance with the organizational terms of the heterosexual matrix. In a scene inwhich Gareth affirms his (self-professed) status as a ‘man of the world’, forinstance, he explains his ability to ‘read a woman’:

You’ve got to know their wants and their needs, and that can be anythingfrom making sure she’s got enough money to buy groceries each week tomaking sure she’s gratified sexually after intercourse. (Gervais andMerchant, 2003, p. 66)

Another scene in which similar themes are played with occurs in the fifthepisode of the first series. The introduction of a placement student in thisepisode (a young, attractive woman with whom Brent painfully attempts todevelop a flirtatious rapport) brings issues of hetero sexuality to the fore. Thetheme of sexuality is also played out in various other scenes in this sameepisode, simultaneously predatory and pathetic, in which Brent interviewstwo candidates (one male, one female) for a secretarial post. There is a strongsense of voyeurism when Brent takes Polaroid photos of them, with noexplanation (either to the characters, or to the audience) as to why he needsthem. He just says that taking photos is ‘part of the process’.

He starts with the man: ‘let’s get him out of the way’. Then, having applieda fragrance sample from a GQ magazine in his desk drawer, and loungingover the corner of his desk with his groin (in the centre of the shot) thrustforwards, he interviews the female candidate. In the interview, he dismissesher qualifications as ‘boring’ and says he want to hear about her as a person.He then proceeds to talk (over her) about drinking lager and meeting up withher later in a local pub. While this is happening in Brent’s office, Gareth sets



up a compulsory health and safety seminar for the placement student, stagedin order to find out if she has a boyfriend. Later in this same episode the mengo straight from work to a local club (‘Chasers’), in which we see themdancing and sweating in their suits and (gradually loosening) ties.

In this particular episode, and in many others throughout The Office, theintersection between managerialism, hegemonic masculinity and heteronor-mativity is parodied. In this context, both the performativity and the pathos ofwhat Borgerson, drawing on Butler, describes as ‘organizing subjectivities’according to the terms of the heterosexual matrix, is subject to critical reflec-tion. In particular, scenes such as these seem to illustrate vividly the futilityand fragility of the gendered organization of the desire for recognition, atheme to which we now turn.

The desire for recognition in The Office

Queer theory, as it has been articulated in Butler’s writing, develops the idea,derived largely from Hegelian philosophy, that the process of becoming asubject is driven by the desire for recognition (Borgerson, 2005; Hancock andTyler, 2001; Hancock and Tyler, forthcoming). As Butler puts it (summing upthe Hegelian position), ‘recognition precedes and conditions the formation ofthe subject: recognition is not conferred on a subject, but forms that subject’(Butler, 1993, p. 226, original emphasis). In particular, Butler emphasizes howthis process must be understood as gendered and in doing so, draws attentionto the constraints imposed by the gendered norms according to which thestruggle for recognition takes place. Referring to the subject positions engen-dered by the heterosexual matrix, she argues that:

The interdependency of these positions recalls the Hegelian structure offailed reciprocity between master and slave, in particular, the unexpecteddependency of the master on the slave in order to establish his own identitythrough reflection (Butler, 2000, pp. 56–7).

Here Butler emphasizes the interdependency of subject positions driven bythe desire for recognition (and, in her analysis, situated according to the termsof the heterosexual matrix) and particularly, in this respect, the master’sreliance on the slave for ‘his own identity’.

The extent to which David Brent is so painfully driven by his need to beacknowledged as a charismatic leader (by his bosses; by his co-workers andemployees; perhaps most excruciatingly by those who organize and attendhis motivation seminar in Series Two, and of course, by the producers andaudience of the ‘mockumentary’ itself) can perhaps be read as something ofa parody of the Hegelian desire for recognition. Because Brent tries so hard toelicit the recognition he clearly desires, and because that recognition is basedupon qualities he so obviously lacks (and circumstances which are, much to



his frustration, entirely beyond his control), it always eludes him — a thememanifest throughout The Office in Brent’s often abject humour and misplacedpaternalism. As he puts it in one of his more melancholic ‘talking head’moments in Episode One of the first series:

What upsets me about the job? Wasted talent. People could come to me, andthey could go, ‘Excuse me, David, but you’ve been in the business twelveyears. Can you just spare us a moment to tell us how to run a team, how tokeep them task-orientated as well as happy?’ But they don’t. That’s thetragedy. (Gervais and Merchant, 2002, p. 35)

This is just one of the many examples in The Office where Brent’s desire forrecognition remains unrequited. The humour derived from this ‘tragedy’ isplayed out throughout both series, culminating in Brent being sacked at theend of Series Two. The opening episode of this series can be seen as foreshad-owing his eventual downfall. Following a merger with the Swindon branch,Brent makes a welcome speech that is full of inappropriate humour and facileattempts to secure recognition of his status in a scene that evokes simulta-neous empathy and repulsion. While cringing at his social ineptitude, we alsoglimpse the more tragic aspects of Brent’s somewhat precarious position in ascene that, in highlighting Brent’s need for recognition, emphasizes both hismanagerial bravado and his ultimate vulnerability. The latter is brought aboutlargely because of the degree to which his self-identity clearly depends on thesuccessful performance of a managerial style — which he describes as a‘chill-out, let’s-get-to-know-each-other type of vibe’ (Gervais and Merchant,2003, p. 27) — associated with a charismatic authority that, as noted above, heclearly lacks, and a process of recognition that perpetually eludes him. Eachattempt he makes to engage with his new staff is rebuffed. The stage instruc-tions at the end of this scene describe Brent as ‘a broken man’: As peopleshuffle off in embarrassed silence. Brent stays seated. Everyone avoidslooking at him as they leave (Gervais and Merchant, 2003, p. 34).

Later on in the series, again in one of his self-avowedly profound ‘talkinghead’ moments, Brent explains:

You grow up, you work half a century, you get a golden handshake, yourest a couple of years and you’re dead. And the only thing that makes thatcrazy ride worthwhile is, ‘Did I enjoy it? What did I learn? What was thepoint?’ That’s where I come in. You’re seen how I react to people. I makethem feel good, make them think that anything’s possible. If I make themlaugh along the way, sue me ... and I don’t do it so they’ll turn around andgo ‘Ooh, thank you David for the opportunity, thank you for the wisdom,thank you for the laughs’. I do it so one day someone’ll go, ‘There goesDavid Brent ... I must remember to thank him’. (Gervais and Merchant,2002, p. 267)



The second series of The Office in particular contains many scenes and formsof interaction in which this theme is unravelled, especially those in whichBrent struggles to keep his job. This is apparent, for instance, in the secondepisode of Series Two, in which Brent carries out staff appraisals — mosttypically these are constructed as encounters in which Brent pressures hisstaff into complementing his managerial abilities. In one scene, in spite of histalk on empowerment, Brent bullies Dawn into identifying him as a rolemodel — his desperation turning to anger when he refuses to allow her toname a female alternative. Having established himself in this position, Brentthen proceeds to relieve Dawn of her own sense of self when he decidesthat her primary identity is as a receptionist and not, as she claims, as anillustrator — an identity that she seems to be struggling to hang onto. InButler’s terms, this could be seen as another example of the enactment ofgender according to the terms of the heterosexual matrix in which women arepositioned in such a way as to reflect and reinforce men’s desire for recogni-tion, resulting in a gendered (binary and hierarchical) organization of theHegelian dialectic of recognition.

Pathos and parody in The Office

As ‘a radical questioning of social and cultural norms’ (Morton, 1996, p. 280),queer theory emphasizes that sustaining a particular performance — whatButler (in Osborne and Segal, 1994) calls ‘ritualistic reproduction’ — dependsupon a densely woven web of social relations that render that performanceintelligible, believable and acceptable. With this in mind, queer theorists suchas Butler see the ubiquity of the scripts of any given social reality, coupledwith the process of constant recitation, as testimony to the inherent instabilityof that reality. Hence, as a mode of critique, queer theory is concerned toemphasize that any identity compelled to repeat itself in order to establish theillusion of its own uniformity is an identity perpetually in crisis. In this sense,as noted above, one of the recurring themes in queer theory is its emphasis ona politics of parody — a ‘subversive and parodic redeployment of power’(Butler, 2000, p. 158) — that implicitly reveals the contingency of genderperformativity.

The concept of parody deployed in queer theory, however, does notassume that there is an original which parodic identities imitate; rather asButler puts it, ‘the parody is of the very notion of an original’ (Butler, 2000, p.175, original emphasis). In other words, in queer theory, ‘the parodic repeti-tion of “the original” ... reveals the original to be nothing other than a parodyof the idea of the natural and the original’ (Butler, 2000, p. 41, originalemphasis).

Renowned for making its audience laugh and cringe simultaneously, as wehave already noted, The Office exaggerates and ridicules particular aspects of



reified gender performance, especially the implicit conflation of hegemonicmasculinity and contemporary forms of culture management and transfor-mational leadership. By de-naturalizing office life, elucidating its performa-tivity as well as the fragility and ultimate futility of its various expressions,The Office arguably ‘queers’ management in this respect. In this sense, TheOffice can be read as a parody of what Knights and Kerfoot (2004, p. 439)describe as the masculine, managerial obsession ‘with controlling the condi-tions that are seen to secure the self’.

For instance, as the pathos of the narrative gathers momentum, towards theend of the second series Brent is sacked on Red Nose Day (a ‘fun’ packed dayof fundraising events)8 while dressed as an ostrich. However, his costume ishidden from view under the desk and it is only when he has been offered aredundancy package and stands up that we, and the two people who havejust sacked him, become aware of his situation. Here both his posited mascu-line prowess and his managerial status are rendered pathetic in these scenesin which not only gender and managerial performativity are brought to thefore, but also the fragility and vulnerability of subjectivities organizedaccording to the heterosexual matrix and the performance principles of con-temporary managerialism. The futility of these organizing frameworks ismade even more apparent by the ostrich outfit — signifying Brent’s inability(or perhaps reluctance) to see himself as others see him. Previously hiddenfrom view, the appearance of Brent’s ostrich costume throws our earlierreading of the scene into sharp relief; we become aware of the pathos of hisvulnerability and our earlier reading of Brent’s character, and its variouscultural reference points, is effectively queered as a result. In this respect, boththe gendered performance/organization and the ultimate pathos of the desirefor recognition are reflected on, particularly when following this scene Brentabandons all pretence and begs not to be made redundant:

Don’t make me redundant ... Please ... No, but just say that it’s not definitenow before you go. And we can ... I will try twice as hard, I really will. Iknow I’ve been complacent and I’ll turn this place ‘round if we just say thatit’s not definite now, and then we can, um ... ‘You’re not going until’ ...Starting from now. Starting from now. (Gervais and Merchant, 2003, p. 251)

Brent’s desire for recognition coupled with his ultimate vulnerability meansthat his identity (as the office manager, as masculine, as heterosexual, white,able-bodied and so on) is perpetually in crisis: that is, evoked under pressureyet constantly unstable and much of our amusement of course, derives fromour mocking fascination with the ways in which this perpetual crisis is playedout.

Perhaps nowhere is this more excruciating than in the second episode ofSeries One, in a scene in which Brent takes his boss Jennifer on a tour of thewarehouse with a view to identifying jobs that might be cut in preparation forthe impending merger with Swindon. While this is happening several of the



male warehouse staff are watching a video of two ‘shagging dogs’. Brent’sdiscomfort as he tries to banter with the warehouse staff and maintain somedegree of decorum in relation to his female boss is the source of most of thehumour in this scene, and in the discussions that follow. These scenes inparticular illustrate how unreflexive practices ‘both communicate and consti-tute gender in paid work settings’ (Martin, 2006, p. 254). Here, and elsewhere(as noted above), Brent constantly forgets that he ‘hates racism’ and tells racistjokes, that he ‘hates sexism’ and makes sexist gestures and so on. These slipscan perhaps be taken as parodies of the power but also the pathos of hege-monic masculinity and heteronormativity in this respect. Struggling forrecognition from two incompatible constituencies, Brent’s crisis in thesescenes is played out in terms of his inability to negotiate between them and inthis sense, we effectively catch him in the practice of performing gender(Martin, 2006).

For us, much of the humour here and elsewhere lies in Brent’s apparentconfusion over the position he should, as ‘one of the lads’ and as a manager,be seen to be adopting in relation to gender and sexuality. In a scene inEpisode One of the first series in which this struggle is also explored, whileinducting a temporary member of staff, Brent points to a sketch pinned to anoticeboard and says

Here you are, look. This is the sort of work we’re doing. Cartoons. ‘Doesmy bum look big in this?’ That’s not sexist, that’s the bloke saying it ... atlast! So, all for that ... all for that in the workplace. (Gervais and Merchant,2002, p. 38)

What is important and perhaps most parodic and pathetic in this scene is thedramatic irony engendered by the long pause at the end of this dialogue,during which Brent looks around him and directly into the camera severaltimes, and then stands uncomfortably, seemingly awaiting some degree ofacknowledgement of the ‘political correctness’ or radicalism of his position,or even some degree of concurrence (providing the apparently much neededreassurance that he has adopted the ‘right’ way of thinking about and dealingwith sexism in the workplace). Of course this is not forthcoming, and Brent isleft isolated and unrecognized at the end of the scene (as indeed he is in mostothers and ultimately, in the series as a whole).

Undoing organization? Queer theory and The Office

To recap, in Butler’s writing, ‘gender is a kind of impersonation that passes asthe real’ (Butler, 2000, p. x) so that parodic repetition of the ‘original’ revealsthe original to be nothing more than a parody of the very idea of originality.Based on her performative ontology, Butler proposes the enactment of a seriesof perpetually parodic practices that, she argues, potentially disrupt the



assumed continuity that renders certain performances effective. That much ofwhat we call management and organization can be seen as a ‘performativeaccomplishment’ (Butler, 2000, p. 179) in this respect means that, in Butler’sterms, ‘in its very character as performance resides the possibility of contest-ing its reified status’ (1988, p. 520). In this sense, it might be argued that thecritical potential of The Office as a cultural text, and of parody as a mode ofcultural critique more generally lies, at least in part, in its capacity to revealsome of the ways in which reified and naturalized conceptions of organiza-tional identity might be understood as performatively constituted. Broughtinto relief in The Office are the ways in which certain cultural configurationsand formations have seized a hegemonic hold on management and genderperformativity in the workplace, so that they have come to be seen as anatural part of the cultural landscape of organizational life.

However, the proposition, or rather presumption, that we adopt a ‘queerperspective’ in our thinking about organizations (as if such as thing werepossible, of course) raises the problem of ‘mainstreaming’ queer (deLaurentis, 1991, 1994, cited in Jagose, 2000 and Parker, 2002a) and highlightsthe perpetual risk of it being taken over by ‘precisely those ... forces andinstitutions it was coined to resist’ (Jagose, 2000, p. 2). Of course queer theoryis not unique in this respect; that is, in terms of its vulnerability to the threatof appropriation — such is the potential fate of any critical perspective,counter-cultural text or movement, we might argue. Yet in response to theparallel threats of mainstreaming and appropriation, we might (perhapsrather too hopefully) anticipate that, because of its emphasis on immanentcritique, its characteristic ambivalence and its ability to elide disciplinaryboundaries, queer has the capacity to retain ‘a conceptually unique potentialas a necessarily unfixed site of engagement and contestation’ (Jagose, 2000, p.2). Seen in this light, queer remains a form of ceaseless interrogation of boththe preconditions of particular forms of identity, and also of their (and itsown) performative effects.

Yet subversive performances also run the risk of becoming clichés orcommodities, particularly within commodity cultures in which ‘subversioncarries market value’ (Butler, 2000, p. xxi). A related point (of Butler’s) is thatsubversive acts that are immediately legible, or that can be anticipated, arethose that are most easily appropriated, or are those that are most readilyreduced to individual (as opposed to collective) acts of resistance.9 Moreimportant as modes of critique, she argues (in Osborne and Segal, 1994), are

The ones that challenge our practices of reading, that make us uncertainabout how to read, or make us think that we have to renegotiate the way inwhich we read.

Our suggestion here is that as a popular cultural text, and as a mode of criticalengagement with contemporary managerialism and heteronormativity, TheOffice challenges us to engage in something of a critical, counter-cultural



‘reading’ of the management and organization of gender, a process throughwhich (as the title of this article suggests) management itself is thrown intocomic relief, revealing its ambiguities and tensions and ultimately, its insta-bility. In this sense, we share Parker’s somewhat optimistic, inclusive view ofqueer theory as a radical social constructionism, one that potentially unsettlessedimented ways of thinking about and enacting ‘the hierarchy that sustainsmasculine [and heteronormative] discourses and subjectivities as organiza-tionally pre-eminent’ (Knights and Kerfoot, 2004, p. 234), and one that isdriven by the desire to expose performative acts that create the appearance ofessence. The latter, as Butler herself notes, has of course been ‘a part ofcultural critique since Marx’ (Butler, 2000, p. 44).

Concluding thoughts

In emphasizing that The Office can be read as a text that effectively ‘queers’management we have highlighted throughout our discussion some of theways in which The Office encourages precisely the kind of popular critiquethat Inglis (1988) argues the media has the capacity to engage us in. We havenot sought to present an account of what we think The Office ‘means’ in anydefinitive sense. Rather, we have tried to reflect on what can — and should,we might venture — happen when some of the ideas, techniques and impera-tives associated with contemporary managerialism are worked into alterna-tive (parodic) ways of performing and reading them. Inevitably, this meansthat our reading of The Office (and of course of queer theory) provides only apartial view. While important aspects of identity such as race, ethnicity, socialclass, age and disability are also played out in The Office in ways that subjectthe norms governing what constitutes viable subjectivity to critique (seeButler, 2004), our discussion here has focused specifically on gender andsexuality. This is because our concern has been to engage the critical interro-gation of management in The Office with the feminist critique of the hetero-sexual matrix and of gender performativity, partly in order to highlight thecritical potential of popular cultural texts such as these, and partly to reiteratethe centrality of gender, and particularly of the gendered organization of thedesire for recognition, to the performativity (and therefore study) of manage-ment and organization.

That The Office seemingly makes a mockery of so many aspects of contem-porary organizational life, including critical forms of reflection and engage-ment, might of course have been read as more problematic than our accounthas suggested.10 Yet what might for some be regarded as The Office’s fatalflaw, namely that it does not presuppose another ‘better’ way of doingmanagement, is for us, central to its critical and reflexive potential. Rather, asa cultural text it invites critical engagement, and its position on the relation-ship between gender, subjectivity and management remains necessarily



unresolved, highlighting tensions and contradictions in hegemonic ways ofthinking and doing, but without proposing an alternative, utopian vision.This position echoes Rhodes’s (2001, p. 381) conclusion to his analysis of TheSimpsons, in which he argues that as a mode of critique

it shows that existing patterns of social relations are not immutable but atthe same time does not portray an idealistic or utopian vision of change.This is a critique of organization that does not claim to know it all and doesnot claim solutions to problems; rather, it plays out issues of power in adramatic, comic and irreverent way.

In our view, The Office’s critical capacity, much like that of cultural texts suchas The Simpsons or intellectual movements such as queer theory, lies in itsability to disrupt and disturb and in doing so, to make us feel uncomfortable.In this sense, our view is that the comedy and the critical potential of TheOffice derives largely from the ways in which it makes a mockery of, and sodisrupts, the performativity of management, albeit for a brief moment. Yet itspopularity as a cultural text suggests that it has indeed exposed the mundane,taken-for-granted aspects of organizational life to critique by a relativelybroad audience, one that, we might assume, would otherwise be unlikely toengage with the scholarly outputs associated with say, critical managementstudies (see Parker, 2002b).

As we noted above, much of the humour in The Office derives from Brent’sdesire for recognition coupled with his excessive recitation of hegemonicmasculinity and heteronormativity. The reflexive potential of this ‘excess’,and of the performativity that The Office brings to the fore derives largely fromthe ways in which it separates out and draws attention, however momentarilyand precariously, to the ‘original’ claim: a point made by Butler in her critiqueof the gendered evocation and organization of the desire for recognition, andof the norms governing the conferment or denial of viable subjectivity. Thiscapacity, for comic reflexivity and excess as critique, is central to what TheOffice shares in common with queer theory. It represents, at the level ofpopular culture, a form of ‘queering’ management that takes the relationshipbetween management, normative masculinity and the desire for recognitionas its problematic ‘situation’; a theme that remains central to understandingthe relationship between gender, management and organization.

In this sense, then, we would agree with Czarniawska’s (2006, p. 250) claimthat ‘there are many reasons to take ... popular culture ... seriously whenstudying gender as a social practice’, particularly in terms of its capacity toshape and reflect organizational practices, and to contribute to our under-standing of the formation and potential for subversion of those practices, notleast (in the example we have considered here) because of its ability simply tounsettle established ways of reading and enacting the gendered organizationof doing and being.



Acknowledgements

This article is a genuinely collaborative effort by the two authors. We are verygrateful to Martin Parker and to Philip Hancock for their comments on amuch earlier version of the material on queer theory. We are also particularlygrateful to David Knights and to the anonymous reviewers of this laterversion, for their thought-provoking questions and suggestions. We enjoyedreflecting on their comments and reworking the article accordingly (but notas much as watching The Office).

Notes

1. This is a phrase Butler uses in a range of ways throughout different texts to referto an ontological, epistemic regime that organizes men and women as socialsubjects into discrete, hierarchical genders, and which establishes desire ‘as aheterosexual, male prerogative’ (Butler, 2000, p. 23). As Butler herself acknowl-edges (see Butler, 2000, p. 93), her work on the heterosexual matrix is indebted toGayle Rubin’s ‘sex/gender system’, a term she uses to describe the regulatorycultural mechanism that transforms biological males and females into binarygenders.

2. We need to acknowledge that, in accordance with the emphasis placed on genderperformativity here, as the authors of this article, we are aware that our readingof The Office and of queer theory, and the ways in which we have written thisreading into our argument here, are shaped by our own understanding andperformance of gender (see Rhodes and Brown, 2005 for a more in-depthdiscussion of the relationship between reflexivity, reading and writing).

3. We should not forget, however, that comedy, and particularly situation comediessuch as The Office, are essentially products of the culture industry. At the time ofwriting for instance, the broadcast rights to The Office have reportedly been soldto some 60 countries.

4. In Undoing Gender for instance, Butler (2004) explores the corporeality of genderorganization, emphasizing in particular the ways in which various institutionalarrangements and organizational imperatives are implicated in the process ofbecoming gendered. Relatively neglected in her work, however, is a consider-ation of the ways in which the performance and corporeality of gender shapesthe lived experience of work.

5. As Borgerson (2005) has noted, the concept of ‘iteration’ is central to Butler’stheory of gender performativity. In this respect, she draws on the Derrideannotion of iteration, formulated in response to the theorization of speech acts bySearle and Austin (a Derridean rewriting of Austin, we might say — see Butler,in Osborne and Segal, 1994) which itself implies that every act is itself a recitation,involving the citation of a prior chain of acts.

6. We are not suggesting that The Office is in any sense unique in this respect; on thecontrary, it is clearly part of a discernible tradition in popular culture that hasproduced a series of parodic or satirical texts focusing on the workplace across a



range of media forms and genres one that, as Czarniawska and Rhodes (2004)note, dates back at least to Chaplin’s Modern Times in mass culture, and to thecarnival in folk culture. Other examples of popular and mass cultural critiquethat take a similar approach to work and organization can be identified, forinstance, in the form of spoof websites or ‘how to’ guides, in the Dilbert comicstrips, and in the animated television series, The Simpsons (Czarniawska andRhodes, 2004; Rhodes, 2001).

7. In Undoing Gender Butler replaces this term (derived from Adrienne Rich’s work)with ‘presumptive heterosexuality’ (see Butler, 2004, p. 186).

8. Red Nose Day is a UK-wide fundraising event organized by Comic Relief everytwo years. It is the largest such event in the UK and culminates in a live televisionbroadcast involving fundraising, comedy sketches, outside broadcasts and docu-mentary footage.

9. This is a theme Butler (1988, p. 525) has addressed in earlier work when sheargues that ‘the transformation of social relations becomes a matter .. . of trans-forming hegemonic social conditions rather than the individual acts that arespawned by those conditions. Indeed, one runs the risk of addressing the merelyindirect, if not epiphenomenal, reflection of those conditions if one remainsrestricted to a politics of acts’.

10. Another way of reading The Office might have argued that it is somewhat politi-cally nihilistic in its disavowal of any appeal to a ‘final vocabulary’ (Rorty, 1989),or in its reluctance to occupy any discernible critical ‘position’ for too long; acharacteristic it shares with queer theory’s commitment to immanent critique(see Butler, 2000, p. vii).

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Management in/as Comic Relief: Queer Theory and Gender Performativity in The Office

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