What can Butler´s theory of the assembly contribute to organizational education theory? How can notions of Occupy Wall Street, Gezi-Park, Tahrir, Majdan, Ferguson and Hongkong, Tea Party and Pegida relate to organizational education? Butlers´ (2016) analysis of the dynamics and tactics of public assemblies broadens a speech act centered theory of performativity into body related perspectives on collective actors in the public space. Highlighting dimensions and mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, Butler is interested in the ethics of resistance in an endangered world, where solidarian action more and more becomes fragile.

In recent discourses on democracy, societal and aesthetic discourses go hand in hand. The Beuysian idea of the permanent conference, the concept of ‘social plastic’, the notion of a democratic society as ‘art’ connects public spaces and performative arts in the search for new forms of assembly and participation: collective decision making, participation of whom, societal engagement of and for the future (Burri 2014) are becoming relevant for an organizational education perspective, which regards organizations as educational fields and is interested in the knowledge shapes emerging within those fields (Lagaay & Seitz 2018).

Out of positive conceptualizations of a collective and foundational democracy, finding collective ways into the future is connected to the dispositive of the ‘assembly’. Aesthetic theory and political philosophy merge into an understanding of the transformational quality of democratic forms in the performative practices of social movements and collective democratic practices. Lorey (2013) arguing for opening the dichotomy between presence and representation, here refers to the ‘presentable-performative’. Such forms of organizing are understood as fighting a juridical and representational model of power (Lorey 2017) and therefore as constitutional processes within a presentable democracy, following the principle of radical inclusion in the presence (Lorey 2016). Those conceptualizations towards a presentational democratization are suggested as a theory of the political presence. Against linear conceptualizations of representation as well as linear progression and growth, or representational concepts of institution she suggests ‘presentable democracy’ as a practice of care and connectedness as well as of inevitable responsibility (Lorey 2020) towards the vulnerability of bodies (Aktas 2020). Alaimo (2008) here from a feminist perspective too, connects to perspectives on trans-corporeality.

The paper discusses these theoretical debates on performative participation, aesthetic transformation and transcorporeality as reference points of an organizational education theory of assembly. Links to these primarily poststructural and neo-materialist debates can be found in organizational education foundations like Deweys´ pragmatist approach (Elkjaer 2018), the perspective of  ‘democracy as experience´ and the ‘embryonic society’ (Göhlich / Weber 2011), supporting the notion of organizations, networks and social movements as educational fields.

The paper is to be understood as a theoretical paper, discussing the relevance of recent literature streams in aesthetics, political philosophy and organizational theory for an organizational education theory of ‘assembly’. This theoretical concept as practice becomes relevant, too, in the broad field of participatory approaches for organizational and network learning (Schröer & Wendt 2018; Weber 2018). Participatory approaches like scenarios (Behrendt 2018), Innovation labs (Tonurist et al 2017) and its institutionalized forms of future councils (Unteregger 2006) as participatory institutions for the representation (Leggewie & Nanz 2016) of the rights of future generations (Tamoudi et al 2020) can be regarded as such materializing practices of organizing performative participation, aesthetic transformation and transcorporeality.

As the paper will show, new forms of organizing participation and movement based organizing (Schröder 2018) and its forms of institutionalization (Leggewie & Nanz 2013) will be discussed in the light of the above mentioned recent theoretical debates and be connected to their potential for an organizational education theory of ‘assembly’.

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