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In this paper we engage with the liberalist project in organization and management studies. The first `face' of organizational liberalism is expressed through post-bureaucratic discourses which very much define the mainstream of management thought today, highlighting the need for organizational openness which can only come through a liberation of management from the closed structures of the bureaucracy. The second face of organizational liberalism defends the bureaucratic ethos of liberal-democratic institutions and points to the Popperian concept of the `open society' that requires rational, procedural laws to reconcile conflicting values in societies and organizations, thus ensuring the existence of a plurality of ways of life. We point to the limitations of both `faces' of organizational liberalism by discussing key aspects of Slavoj Žižek's work. Žižek displaces the liberal conception of institutionally sanctioned `openness' by claiming this actually constitutes a closure and puts a challenge to us. How can we create real openness? How is a real difference possible?

In this paper we develop a particular way of understanding literature and organization with the aim of drawing on and extending the relationship between the two. Hence our subtitle: exploring the seam. Although the use of literary concepts and theories within our discipline is now well established, the way in which such ideas are taken up often neglects debate and contestation by treating 'literature' as a relatively homogeneous field. By following some of the ardent debates relating to issues of representation, the relation between text and extra-textual reality, and literature's disclosure of its status as fiction, we find a discussion of (social) organization at the heart of contemporary literary theory. It is the oscillation between literature and organization that structures this paper and gives us our argument: that 'organization' and 'literature' are mutually co-articulating and interdependent concepts and fields of enquiry.

Considering the worsening climate crisis, we argue that our present conditions require a particular approach to the past in order to disrupt current intellectual trajectories. We enrol Walter Benjamin's concept of history, via the writings of Svetlana Alexievich and Margaret Atwood, with the aim of bringing a criticality to the present to make us reconsider the ways we think about and act in our present world. Based on Alexievich and Atwood's work, we develop research conceptualizations of forgotten and alternative histories to open up a space to consider a future climate-changed world beyond the dominant tropes of inevitable dystopian apocalypse and clever technological adaptation. We offer the concept of 'hope without optimism' in encouraging management and organization studies scholars to develop a discipline fit for the Anthropocene.

Our purpose in this article is to relate the real movements in the economy during 2008 to the 'image-work' of financial institutions. Over the period January—December 2008 we collected 241 separate advertisements from 61 financial institutions published in the Financial Times. Reading across the ensemble of advertisements for themes and evocative images provides an impression of the financial imaginaries created by these organizations as the global financial crisis unfolded. In using the term 'phantasmagoria' we move beyond its colloquial sense of a set of strange images designed to dazzle towards the more technical connotation used by Rancière (2004) who suggested that words and images can offer a trace of an overall determining set-up if they are torn from their obviousness so they become phantasmagoric figures. The key phantasmagoric figure we identify here is that of the financial institution as timeless, immortal and unchanging; a coherent and autonomous entity amongst other actors. This notion of uniqueness belies the commonality of thinking which precipitated the global financial crisis as well as the limited capacity for control of financial institutions in relation to market events. It also functions as a powerful naturalizing force, making it hard to question certain aspects of the recent period of 'capitalism in crisis'.

Can one sell any positive value of Trump's presidency to an academic audience? The editors of this special series invited polemical essays, but maybe asking readers to consider the merit of Trump is going a little too far? We put forward the argument here that as critical scholars we simply cannot allow ourselves to be swept up in the bien-pensant tide of Trump-trashing, which has almost become as addictive as the current reality-TV quality of the US presidency itself. As Roitman has suggested in a different context, 'the concept of crisis is crucial to the "how" of thinking otherwise'. Thus, we believe it crucial to seize the crisis of the Trump presidency as an opportunity to activate the utopian imagination, rather than an occasion for moralizing judgements or regressive nostalgia which would effectively mean aligning ourselves with the neo-liberal consensus many of us spent our careers critiquing. We further argue that Fredric Jameson's notion of the dialectic may refresh our critical conceptual arsenal in these disorienting times. This dialectical approach is meant to alter not only how we see reality, but also what we think we can do with it. It enables us to see the traumatic event of Trump's election as providing a form and space through which contradictions that have been locked firmly into place in our socioeconomic set-up over the past few decades have become much more malleable, partly because of their increased visibility.

Professor Michael Mann is one of the world's leading climate scientists and best known for his work on historical temperature trends and hemispherical climate reconstructions, including the iconic 'hockey stick' graph of long-term temperature variations. As a result of his work, Professor Mann became a central target of criticism from conservative politicians, industry groups and the climate change denial industry. The following edited interview was conducted in October 2012.

Intro -- Contents -- Contributors -- As if One Could Provide an Introduction to Organization 2666 -- Abstract -- Literary Fiction and Organization Studies -- Bolaño, Organization and the Academy -- Towards Organization 2666 -- Introducing the Chapters -- References -- Bolaño Versus Business Strategy -- Abstract -- References -- Reading as Theorizing. A Conjecture Based on the Savage Detectives' Mode of Inquiry -- Abstract -- Disclaimer -- Introduction -- The Three Components -- On Theorizing in Organization Studies and Sociology -- Fictitious Investigation as a Reflection on Social Research -- The Case: Detective Literature and the Savage Detectives -- The Case and a Conjecture -- Enigmas in the Savage Detectives -- The Mode of Inquiry in the Savage Detectives -- The Consequences: Reading as Theorizing -- References -- The Key to Our Century and the Mystery at Port-Vendres -- Abstract -- Introduction -- A Tumultuous Movement -- The Mystery of Violence -- A Missing Key -- Conclusion -- References -- The Absent Witness: Bolaño's 2666 as a Case of Fictional Accountability -- Abstract -- Introduction -- Accountability: A Traditional Approach -- Two Problems of Accountability -- The Problem of the Account -- The Problem of the Account-Giver -- 2666 Read Through the Lens of Accountability -- The Absent Witness -- The Unspeakable Event -- Fictional Accountability -- Conclusion -- References -- Living, Reading, and Dying in the Didactic Void: Roberto Bolaño's 2666 and Organized Literature -- Abstract -- Introduction -- Literature Without Representation -- Organized Literature -- Organizing the Decolonizing University -- 'Murder, Still Without a Text' -- References -- Encounters with the Undead: Reading the Other(S) in Bolaño's 2666 -- Abstract -- Murdered Women -- The Spectacle -- Rebeca -- Fate -- You Have to Listen to Women -- References.