Towards an ethics of freedom: The politics of storytelling in organisations

Abstract

This article engages with sustainability storytelling from the perspective of freedom. Freedom is discussed in relation to a politics of storytelling that can counter power. Freedom, it is argued, is enacted in genuine storytelling and is experienced between people. The conditions of the possibility of ethics in organisations are thus conditioned on the political framing of the spaces between people in terms of how they condition how people may appear in storytelling and how people together transform these spaces for future appearances. Arendt’s ethics of freedom is contrasted with the concept of freedom embedded in neoliberal capitalism and related to sustainability. Genuine storytelling is to bring something new into existence from the condition of plurality and responsibility for the world. Storytelling presumes a space for plural political participation. Freedom therefore also forwards attention towards the material possibilities that allow people to participate and appear as unique subjects. The article ends by positioning Arendt’s storytelling in relation to a storytelling model for transitioningto sustainability, which positions Latour’s notion of Gaia as the centre of four storytelling cycles.