Material Storytelling - Learning as Intra-Active Becoming

Karen Barad's post-humanist agential realist account of mattering has far reaching implications for understanding intentionality, memory, and learning in organizations. We argue for a diffractive methodology of material storytelling to organizational learning as an alternative to how narrative and storytelling approaches deal with this issue. Organizational learning is thus seen as changes in the living relationalities that constitute the specific spacetimematter manifold configuration that at any moment and in any situation make up the organization. It implies that learning is relocated from what takes place in the human mind to what takes place in here-and-now performances. Learning does not take place through reflection or reflexivity but is the result of a diffractive process in the here-and-now moment of becoming. Subsequently we argue for a multimodal approach to organizational learning. Instead of relying on oral or written language alone, a material storytelling methodology invites us to play with the apparatus of the whole situation and to integrate spatial, material, and bodily dimensions in organizational learning.