The dream that caused reality: the place of the Lacanian subject of science in the field of organization theory

Lacan was concerned with the relationship between psychoanalysis and science. Today, the understanding of his theoretical claims can be significantly extended by analysing how this relationship has emerged as a certain scientific reality. In this article I explain how the evolution of scientific metatheoretical thought has led to the application of Lacanian psychoanalysis as one of the perspectives in organization theory and how the attention paid to Lacan undermines the very scientific condition which has allowed for its development in the first place. By retracing the terms and consequences of the 'Burrell and Morgan debate' I seek to demonstrate how the scientific propensity to take meta-positions in relation to any object of inquiry became an effective way of dealing with the experience of the 'scientific impossibility'. Avoidance of the traumatic encounter resulted in the intensification of 'paradigm wars', in the crystallization of the concept of 'incommensurability' and subsequently in the emergence of a subject of science. The application of Lacan in organization theory became possible precisely within the confines of this rearranged field and turned out to have a subversive effect on the scientific project of organization theory.