ABSTRACT
Critical leadership studies, either implicitly or explicitly, examines normative questions circulating around leadership practice. To this end, in this chapter, we explore posthuman ethics as it resonates with leadership. We begin by exploring the broad tenets of posthumanism understood in terms of a radical and thoroughgoing decentering of the human toward an account of vibrant relations in which dualisms of the human/non-human are dissolved. As an ethical theory, posthumanism seeks to offer an account of lively entanglements through which responsibility flows and heteronomy is valorized. In exploring this understanding in terms of leadership, we identify a series of practices that are affinitive with a posthuman ethical approach, namely: enunciating from within relations; listening to that which does not have a voice; creative conflict within and affirmative dissolving of networks; and querying partiality and enabling curiosity. Since posthuman ethics has a particular affinity with issues around the climate crisis, the theme is woven throughout the chapter. In conclusion, we claim that, with certain reservations, posthuman ethics offers a potentially rich way into leadership as long we retain a lively relationship between the two.
