ABSTRACT

Since the 1960s ‘ad-hocracy’, an approach to organizations that values provisionality and is especially advantaged by new technological systems, has been understood as a ‘radical’ challenge to the rigidity of bureaucratic institutions. This essay argues that commonsense championing of the temporary, the anti-institutional, and the flexible in corporate, political, educational, and daily life established the conditions that preordained the disastrous handling of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States. Most hazardously, a powerful strain of Left critique also advances on a comparable tack, one that too easily embraces temporary and flexible organizational structures over lasting institutional ones, resulting in unintended ideological support for ‘ad-hocracy’.

摘要

自从1960年代的“专制”以来，一种重视临时性并且特别是在新技术系统中获得优势的组织方法，被理解为对官僚机构僵化的“激进”挑战。本文认为，在公司，政治，教育和日常生活中对临时性，反制度性和灵活性的常识性拥护为在美国灾难性地处理COVID-19危机奠定了条件。最危险的是，左派批评的强大力量也以可比的方式发展，这种方式很容易在持久的机构结构之上接受临时和灵活的组织结构，从而导致对“专制”的意想不到的思想支持。