‘Come on, get happy!’ : exploring absurdity and sites of alternate ordering in Twin Peaks

Loacker, Bernadette and Peters, Luc (2015) ‘Come on, get happy!’ : exploring absurdity and sites of alternate ordering in Twin Peaks. Ephemera : Theory and Politics in Organization, 15 (3). pp. 621-649. ISSN 1473-2866

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Abstract

This paper is interested in investigating the complex nexus of sites of organizing and absurdity emerging from the persistent undermining and intermingling of common orders, logics and conventions. In its analysis the paper refers to an example from popular culture – the detective series Twin Peaks – which presents a ‘city of absurdity’. The series is discussed utilising Foucault’s (1970) concept of heterotopia which allows us to convey the ‘other side’ of ‘normal’ order and rational reason, immanent in sites of organizing. Fundamentally, the sites in Twin Peaks evoke an understanding of organization as a dynamic assemblage in which heterogeneous orders, conventions and practices interrelate and collide. Analysed through a ‘heterotopic lens’ the TV series Twin Peaks contributes to the exploration of absurdity as a form of humour, and more generally to a sensitive and vivid knowing and experiencing of organization, organizational ‘otherness’ and absurdity.