ABSTRACT
This chapter expands upon the argument outlined in the Introduction that much of the critical discourse on worker subjectivity, however well-intended, explains subjectivity away. Specifically, this chapter explores how critical scholarship might reclaim subjectivity (or the self) while, at the same time, fostering ways of self-contact outside of work and organizations. Winnicott’s notion of “object-use” proves central in this endeavor. Emerging late in Winnicott’s corpus, object-use signals a developmental advance over object-relating and entails acknowledgment of externality. In other words, through object-use the object becomes real, beyond its imagined attributes formed by the projective mechanisms of object-relating. Moreover, object-use coincides with Winnicott’s notion of ruthlessness, an underappreciated dynamic laden in the actual “doing” of critique that, when fostered, might advance critical scholarship beyond a resentful compulsion to repeat.
