Dimensional Doodles

Existential Office

Sartre's existence precedes essence,
Existential crisis in a cubicle's presence.
In corporate halls, choices at stake,
Authenticity questioned, soul left to break.

Camus' absurdism in quarterly reports,
Spreadsheets as Sisyphean supports.
Finding meaning in meaningless rounds,
Was this success or just a boulder's bounds?

Kierkegaard's leap from reason to faith,
When Excel can't calculate life's wraith.
Subjective truth, in objective disguise,
Metrics fail to open the eyes.

Nietzsche's will to power in boardroom strife,
Ubermensch dreams in the corporate life.
Beyond good and evil, profit and loss,
What values remain amidst the dross?

Heidegger's Dasein in roles defined,
Being-in-the-world with goals confined.
Being-towards-death in every year's end,
What matters most when the horizon bends?

Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity,
In office politics and strategy.
Freedom and responsibility entwined,
What projects shape this self defined?

Foucault's power structures subtly imposed,
Control in memos and meetings exposed.
Disciplinary techniques unseen yet felt,
How to resist when you've been dealt?

Derrida's deconstruction of grand statements,
Finding meaning in corporate refinements.
Différance plays in each text we read,
What hidden meanings have we failed to heed?

Wittgenstein's language games in endless meetings,
Corporate jargon with its varied meanings.
Limits of language shape the world's span,
What truths lie silent in our jargon plan?

Butler's performativity in workplace guise,
Daily drag shows in corporate ties.
Repetition of norms, day after day,
Can we subvert the roles we play?

Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatic flight,
In org charts, a corporate delight.
Lines of flight from structures sought,
What new connections can be thought?

Habermas' communicative action in view,
Team-building exercises with existential hue.
Ideal speech situation seldom found,
How to foster dialogue on common ground?

Horkheimer and Adorno's critical lens,
Seeing through corporate culture's dense.
Enlightenment as mass deception's play,
Commodity fetishism in every sway.

Marcuse's one-dimensional man,
False needs in a consumerist span.
Repressive desublimation's campaign,
How to reclaim freedom's chain?

Baudrillard's simulacra, hyperreality's reign,
Avatars in virtual meetings maintain.
Copy without original, sense without sign,
What's real in a world of pretense design?

Lacan's mirror stage, self-reflection's quest,
Corporate ego, forever repressed.
Desire's lack in career's climb,
Reconciling the split in time.

Levinas' ethics of the Other,
In colleague's gaze, a moral tether.
Face-to-face, ethical demand,
What justice lies in my hand?

Rorty's pragmatism in strategy's flow,
Truth contingent, pragmatics grow.
Solidarity over objectivity's reign,
How to build values that sustain?

Bourdieu's habitus in social space,
Capital's forms in the corporate race.
Cultural, economic, symbolic too,
What fields of power must we pursue?

Althusser's interpellation, roles assigned,
Subjects hailed, identities confined.
Ideological apparatus, corporate creed,
How to find freedom in structures we heed?

Žižek's sublime object, ideology's slip,
Branding's lure, our psyches grip.
Cynical reason yet we partake,
What fantasies do our desires make?