deconstruction and the responsibilities of the accounting academic 2011 critical perspectives on...

7/27/2019 Deconstruction and the Responsibilities of the Accounting Academic 2011 Critical Perspectives on Accounting

1/16

Please cite this article in press as: McKernan JF. Deconstruction and the responsibilities of the accounting academic. CritPerspect Account (2011), doi:10.1016/j.cpa.2011.01.012

ARTICLE IN PRESSGModelYCPAC-1631; No.of Pages16

Critical Perspectives on Accounting xxx (2011) xxxxxx

Contents lists available atScienceDirect

Critical Perspectives on Accounting

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / c p a

Deconstruction and the responsibilities of the accounting academic

John Francis McKernanThe Business School, The University of Glasgow, West Quadrangle, Main Building, Glasgow, Scotland, G12 8QQ, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 2 September 2008Received in revised form20 December 2010Accepted 15 January 2011

Keywords:

DeconstructionResponsibilityAccounting AcademicsReasonTruthMoralityEthics

a b s t r a c t

This paperdrawson thephilosophyof Jacques Derrida toreview andre-evaluate therespon-

sibilities of the accounting community and in particular of the accounting academy. Thepaper begins with a brief explanation of deconstruction and implications of responsibledeconstruction for truth in accounting. It is argued that Derridas philosophy is compatiblewith a pragmatic approach to the pursuit of truth in accounting. In the second section ofthepaper theresponsible,and essentially ethical, nature of deconstruction is discussedandthecharge that it threatensto undermineinstitutionslike accounting that rely of notions oftruth, reasons, objectivity and disinterestedness, is rebuffed. In the third part of the paperresponsibilities of the university as an institution, and accounting, are discussed drawingon some of Derridas work on that theme, and in particular responsibility to and for reason.Derridas analysis is applied to accounting and two competing orders of responsibility areidentifiedand contrasted:a traditional responsibility grounded in representationalism anda new responsibility of openness to the others demand. In the fourth part of the paperdiscussion of contrast and tension between types of responsibility is extended into a con-sideration of the relationship between moral and ethical responsibilities, in the context

of accounting education. The paper concludes with reflections on the responsibilities ofaccounting educators.

2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Responsibility, accounting, and the academy

The University must not be a sclerophthalmic animal1,a hard-eyed animal (Derrida, 1983,p. 5).

1. Prologue

In this paper we reflect on the responsibilities of the accounting community, and in particular accounting academia,from the perspective of the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. Our aim is to help clarify the responsibilities, which Derridasphilosophy, essentially his deconstruction, calls us to, as accounting academics. Derridas critique of western metaphysics,

launched with thepublication in French in 1967 of three texts, Speech and Phenomena (1967a), Of Grammatology (1967b), andWriting and Difference(1967c),was a crucial element in the development of poststructuralism and an important influenceon the emergence of postmodern currents of thought in the humanities and social sciences in recent decades (see Cooper,1989).It has been an important background influence on the linguistic turn taken by much critical thinking in the socialsciences (see e.g.Alvesson and Krreman, 2000),and on the increasing willingness of accounting researchers to approachaccounts as text to be interpreted (see e.g.Arrington and Francis, 1993; Graham, 2008).

E-mail address:[email protected] Derrida notes the distinction Aristotle makes between those sclerophthalmic, hard-eyed, animals, lacking eyelids, and those, including human beings,

that have eyelids which they can use to close themselves off in thought: Man can lower the sheath, adjust the diaphragm, narrow his sight, the better tolisten, remember, and learn (Derrida, 1983,p. 5).

1045-2354/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.cpa.2011.01.012
http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_5/dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2011.01.012http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_5/dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2011.01.012http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_5/dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2011.01.012http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10452354http://www.elsevier.com/locate/cpamailto:[email protected]://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_5/dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2011.01.012http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_5/dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2011.01.012mailto:[email protected]://www.elsevier.com/locate/cpahttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10452354http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_5/dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2011.01.012http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_5/dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2011.01.012


2/16


ARTICLE IN PRESSGModel

YCPAC-1631; No.of Pages16

2 J.F. McKernan / Critical Perspectives on Accountingxxx (2011) xxxxxx

Derridas poststructuralist view of signs and meaning certainly problematizes representation and is of clear criticalrelevance to any line of accounting thought captivated by notions of representational faithfulness ( FASB, 1980)and theidea that our accounts can (re)present reality; make reality present.2 This challenge has been recognized (see e.g.Arringtonand Francis, 1989; McSweeny, 1997; Macintosh, 2002; McKernan and Kosmala, 2007) andsome times expressed in dramaticif somewhat elusive terms. MacIntosh, perhaps the most prominent interpreter of Derridas work for accounting audiences,has, for example, suggested that deconstruction proposes, that the very possibility of constructing some central textualmeaning for key accounting signifiers, such as net income or capital is an impossible dream (p. 122). But surely Derridacant be saying anything so stupid3 as that accounts, or texts generally, have no meaning or that they mean just what wewant them to mean? Given that the term deconstruction is somewhat ambiguous, and that Derridas work has receivedrelatively little direct and sustained consideration in the critical accounting literature, we begin with a very brief sketch ourview of Derridas philosophical project; deconstruction.

Derridas work canbe understood as a response toandradicalizationof structuralist conceptionsof language andmeaning.For Saussure, the pioneer of structural linguistics, language and meaning are an effect of difference:

In the language itself, there are only differences. Even more important than that is the fact that, although in general adifference presupposes positive terms between which the difference holds, in a language there are only differences,and no positive terms. Whether we take the signification or the signal, the language includes neither ideas nor soundsexisting prior to the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonetic differences arising out of the system. In asign, what matters more than any idea or sound associated with it is what other signs surround it (Saussure, 1916,p. 118).

Saussure makes a distinction betweenla langue, language as a system of signs in which the one essential is the union ofsense and sound pattern (1916, p. 14),andparoleas the realization of language in particular instances of its use. Becauselanguage, on this view, is entirely relational, arbitrary (1916, p. 67),lacking natural connections between signifiers (thesound pattern or graphic equivalent) and signifieds (the sense, concept or meaning), it has no essential core but is entirelyhistorical, entirely vulnerable to change, and must, Saussure argues, be studied synchronously (see Culler, 1985,p. 35) as awhole structure existing at a particular point in time: as a system of pure values, determined by nothing else apart fromthe temporary state of its constituent elements (1916, p. 80).When we study the state of a language we must rule out ofconsideration everything that brought that state about, and pay no attention to diachrony (1916, p. 81).

Saussure insistence that the sign is arbitrary, that there are no ideas prior to the linguistic system and that language isfundamentally a matter of difference, has more far reaching implications than Saussure himself, and structuralists generally,were ready to recognize. Saussure held to the idea that within a language system we can have a union of sense and soundpattern (1916, p. 14),a certain stability or fixity in the relationship between signifiers and signifieds across a system at apoint in time. Derridean poststructuralism presses us to accept full consequences of the idea that meaning is an effect ofdifference. Difference seems to be essentially infinite. The meaning of every sign is an effect of its differences from everyother sign, so that meaning seems to be strung across an endlessly expanding web of signs, and never quite stabilized. Itbecomes impossible to hold on to Saussures idea of the sign as an orderly unity of signifier and signified: Impossible to quitepin-down meaning, which is never fully present, stable or determined, but is constantly emerging in the play of signs in anboundlessdissemination(Derrida, 1972a)of differential interactions.

With structuralism we leave behind the idea meaning is imposed on signs by reality; the notion of a correspondencebetween sign and reality. With poststructuralism we find that we have lost even the security of a correspondence betweensignifier and signified. We find that meaning/signification is a product of the interplay of signs, both signifiers and signifiedsin incessant circulation. As we try to grasp the signified, we inevitably find that what we have caught hold of is alwaysmore signifiers. On the poststructuralist view that Derrida pioneers meaning is never fully present: Meaning, if you like, isscattered or dispersed along the whole chain of signifiers: it cannot be easily nailed down, it is never fully present in anyone sign alone, but is rather a kind of constant flickering of presence and absence together ( Eagleton, 1996,p. 111). As thechain of signifiers unfolds in time meaning is always deferred in chain of signifiers each carrying ramifying traces of othersignifiers and contexts. Meaning is always caught in a play of difference and deferral, in diffrance (Derrida, 1972b,p. 1).

The fact that meaning is a complicated matter of difference and that we have to give up the idea that our signs canhave a simple correspondence with referents in reality, and even give up the idea of a simple bond between signifier andsignified, does not mean that we should imagine that our signs are not in touch with a reality beyond language to whichthey can refer4.The fact that we need to give up the correspondence, does not mean that we need to give up on truth.

2 Macintosh (2002), for example, argues that accounting faces a general crisis of representation, which he defines as a widespread loss of faith in thebelief that language, writing, discourse, discursive practices, and so on, can adequately bring the true meaning of some out-there thing-in-itself into ourpresence (2002, p. 114).

3 They usually they charge me with saying that the text means anything . . .If I were saying such a stupid thing, why would that be of any interest?(Derrida, 1999b, p. 79).

4 I never cease to be surprised by critics who see my work as a declaration that there is nothing beyond language, that we are imprisoned in language;it is, in fact, saying the exact opposite. The critique of logocentrism is above all else the search for the other and the other of language. Every week I

receive critical commentaries and studies on deconstruction which operate on the assumption that what they call post-structuralism amounts to sayingthat there is nothing beyond language, that we are submerged in words - and other stupidities of that sort. Certainly, deconstruction tries to show that
http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_5/dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2011.01.012http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_5/dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2011.01.012


3/16




J.F. McKernan / Critical Perspectives on Accountingxxx (2011) xxxxxx 3

Derrida regularly reaffirms his commitment to truth: I have never put such concepts as truth, reference, and stability ofinterpretivecontext radicallyinto question if putting radically into question means contesting that there are and should betruth, reference, and stable contexts of interpretation (Derrida, 1988, p. 150). He recognizes of course that the ties betweenwords between words, concepts, and things are never absolutely guaranteed. There is always some play of difference: Astability is not an immutability; it is by definition always destabilizable (1988, p. 151).He insists that in relatively stablecontexts the ties linking words concepts and things are generally sufficiently demonstrable for us to be able to confidentlydenounce errors, and even dishonesty and confusions when it occurs (1988, p. 151).Whilst deconstruction teaches usa deep distrust of the danger of unbending, unyielding verities (Caputo, 1991,p. 337) but it is perfectly compatible withpragmatic approaches to truth:

Meaningmaywellbeultimatelyundecidableifweviewlanguagecontemplatively,asachainofsignifiersonapage;itbecomes decidable, andwords like truth, reality, knowledge and certainty have something of their force restoredto them, when we think of language ratheras somethingwe do, as indissociably interwovenwith our practicalforms oflife. It is not of course that language then becomes fixed and luminous: on the contrary, it becomes even more fraughtand conflictual than the most deconstructed literary text. It is just that we are then able to see, in a practical ratherthan academicist way, what would countas deciding, determining, persuading, certainty, being truthful, falsifying andthe rest and see, moreover, what beyond language itself is involvedin such definitions. (Eagleton, 1996,p. 127).

The fact that meaning is a matter of difference does not mean that we dont have any determinate meaning 5.In factthe problem is that we have too much determinacy too much closure on meaning and identity. Deconstruction resistsclosure, closing down, closing off, and aims at openness, opening new possibilities, innovation and novelty. (Caputo, 1991,p. 332). Deconstruction, in Derridas terms, is a deeply ethical activity: The deconstructive opening to new possibilities isalways responsible to, and responding to, what has been excluded, what has been closed out in the rush to determinationof the meaning of our texts, our institutions, and ourselves. It is often the least powerful voices and interests that are mostthoroughly excluded.

Rorty(1984) identifies twodistinctsenses of theterm deconstruction: In onesense of deconstruction, theterm refersto a method of reading texts (p. 2)6. Rorty reminds us that Neither this method or any other should be attribute to Derridawho was rather contemptuous of the very idea of method. In a second sense the word refers to the philosophical projectsof Derrida (p. 2). It is in this sense that we will deal with deconstruction in this paper; we have already begunto talk of hisprojects. In this paper we will try to bring deconstruction in this second sense to notions of truth reason and responsibilityin the institutions of accounting and accounting education.

We begin by reflecting on Derridas response to finding himself and his work the subject of what he uncompromisinglydescribes as inventions, insinuations, lies, manipulations (1992a, p. 431)in the pages of the New York Review of Books 7.He castigates the magazine and the academics involved for what he sees as their abuse of power and indecent (1992a,p. 426)violation of the principles that ought to guide both academics and journalists alike. He insists that, irrespective ofwhether they are publishing in high circulation magazines or in peer-reviewed journals, academics and journalists havemuch the same responsibility to maintain an ethics of discussion and the honesty of intellectual debates ( 1992a, p. 426;see also 1988). They have essentially the same purpose and duty, for both:

the task is alwaysin principletorender an accountand torender reason.In both cases one should mark in the publicspace and as rationally as possible ones respect for the principle of reason.This should be donein principle,which iswhat implicitly at least both the academic and the journalist,the one no less than the other,promise to do there. Bothof them have a dutyto do so through research, questioning, inquiry that seeks the true, analysis, presentation ofwhat is or exposition of the facts, historical narrative, discussion, evaluation, interpretation, and putting all thesepropositions together thanks to what is called language, communication, information, pedagogy, and so forth. I insiston these two motifs,the public spaceand theprinciple of reason,as I have often done. The media and academia havethe duty to respect, as their condition, the duty and the right on which they are founded, the principle of reason andthe spirit of Enlightenment . . . (Derrida, 1992a,p. 427)

We start from the position that the accountants mission and duty, especially insofar as her work involves the renderingof financial reports in the public sphere, is broadly the same as that of the journalist and academic: accountants are like

the question of reference is much more complex and problematic than traditional theories supposed. It even asks whether our term reference is entirelyadequate for designating the other. The other, which is beyond language and which summons language, is perhaps not a referent in the normal sensewhich linguists have attached to this term. But to distance oneself thus from the habitual structure of reference, to challenge or complicate our commonassumptions about it, does not amount to saying that there isnothingbeyond language (Derrida, 1984, p. 123124).

5 When I say that there is nothing outside the text, I mean there is nothing outside the context, everything is determined. . . .I would say that a text iscomplicated, there are many meanings struggling with one another, there are tensions, there are over determinations, there are equivocations; but thisdoes not mean that there is indeterminacy. On the contrary, there is too much determinacy. That is the problem. (Derrida, 1999a,b, p. 79).

6 The method of deconstructive criticism aims to show how texts come to embarrass their own ruling systems of logic; and deconstruction shows thisby fastening on the symptomatic points, theaporiaor impasses of meaning, where texts get into trouble, come unstuck, offer to contradict themselves

(Eagleton, 1996, p.116).Culler (1983)andEagleton (1996)provide accessible introductions to the idea and method deconstruction.7 Derridas full account of the affair can be found inDerrida, 1992a, pp. 422454.


4/16





journalists (Solomons, 1991a,p. 287)8.And like the journalist9 and the academic, the accountant has a duty to seek thetrue, analysis, presentation of what is or exposition of the facts,: they have a responsibility to strive for the developmentof accounting that truly tells it like it is (Solomons, 1989,p. 8)10.

Whilst mindful of these inspirational ideals, we need to acknowledge that accountants, journalists, and academics have,in recent times, all too often failed to live up to the deontological rules, norms, and principles ( Derrida, 1992a,p. 430) atthe heart of their implicit social contract (1992a, p. 430)with society11.The danger of misreporting has grown in recenttimes along with the increase in complexity of the reporting environment and the material that needs to be reported upon.

Macintosh et al. (2000) show how the once apparently direct relationship between financial accounts and the reality uponwhich they report has become increasingly indirect and complex in this era of hyperreality (Baudrillard, 1988,p. 16).The old certainties about what faithful representation might mean in accounting have been seriously challenged by thedevelopment of the complexity of the commercial environment. Likewise, Derridas observes that much of the research inthe sciences and humanities, including his own work, the work of deconstruction, has brought Enlightenment principlesand certainties into question12:Not necessarily to criticize or contest them (that is even rarely the case), but in order tothink them better and especially to translate and transform them better in the light of what should be the Enlightenment ofour time, with its new scientific, technical, philosophical, ethical, juridical, political, and other demands (1992a, p. 428).Insuch circumstances, he argues that the first duty of the academic, the journalist, and we suggest the accountant, is to warnreaders that things are complicated, difficult, and that they are called upon to work ( 1992a, p. 429),and not too simplyaccept the account, the report, or the article13:The worst obscurantism takes hold when real difficulties and complicationsare glossed over.

2. Responsible deconstruction

Deconstruction is seen by critics such as John Searle as essentially destructive, as a danger to those of our institutionslike the university, and accounting, that rely on conceptions of reason and truth. He argues that Derridas work threatensour universities by opening the way for a an abandonment of traditional standards of objectivity, truth, and rationality(1993, p. 72). This is a serious misunderstanding, or misrepresentation: Philosophers like Derrida do not urge us to abandonstandards of objectivity, truth, disinterestedness. They urge us, rather, to stop trying to make sense of these notionsin terms of the tradition of western metaphysics: What they deny is that these notions can be explained or defended byreference to the notion of correspondence to mind-independent reality (Rorty, 1994,p. 69). They think that the onlyway in which we can explain and defend these standards is by referring to the context of the practices through which weuse and cultivate them. Really we have no where else to turn to. After all, in terms of that famously badly understood sloganof deconstruction there is nothing outside the text meaning just that there is nothing outside context (Derrida, 1988,p.136). Nothing, that is, outside context understood in broad terms: the text is not the book, it is not confined in a volume

itself confined to the library. It does not suspend reference to history, to the world, to reality, to being, and especially not tothe other, since to say of history, of the world, of reality, that they always appear in an experience, hence in a movement ofinterpretation which contextualizes them according to a network of differences and hence of referral to the other, is surelyto recall that alterity (difference) is irreducible (Derrida, 1988,p. 137).

Derrida insists that deconstruction has never opposed institutions as such, philosophy as such, discipline as such(Derrida, 1997b,p. 5). Deconstruction always involves a degree of disruption; it requires that an institution like accountingbe opened to its own future (Derrida, 1997b,p. 6). Impediments to change need to be challenged and if necessary sweptaway14,but the opening of an institution to its ownfuture entails a respect for institutional tradition and inheritance. Itrequires the maintenance of a tension between disruption and conservation. This affirmative deconstruction that Derridacalls us to bring to our institutions must hold the tension between memory, fidelity, the preservation of something that hasbeen given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break (Derrida, 1997b,pp. 56).

8 We recognize, of course, that financial reporting in capitalism is susceptible to biases and distortions (Tinker, 1991, p.301). We appreciate that theideal of truth in accounting can never be perfectly achieved, but insist that accountants have a duty to resist the temptation to become partisan.

9 SeeSoffer (2009)andWard (2009)for recent reviews of debate concerning objectivity and truth in journalism, and seeWard (1999)for discussion ofa pragmatic approach to journalistic objectivity.

10 We can agree with Solomons that the pursuit of representational faithfulness . . .is central to accountings mission (1991b, p. 312), subject to aninsistence that commitment to representational faithfulness in accounting need not rely on any particular philosophical presupposition and certainly doesnot necessitate a commitment to a correspondence theory of truth (SeeRorty, 1994).

11 Just as Solomons urges that the accountant must retain neutrality as her guiding light even if perfect neutrality of information can never be achieved(Solomons, 1991a,p. 295), Derrida acknowledges that respect for these rules and principles can never be guaranteed and is in fact not always possible:what we are talking about here is something like an infinite task or a regulating idea (Derrida, 1992a, p. 430).

12 It has raised questions concerning, for example, the history and foundation of the principle of reason, the history and foundation of the value of truth,of the interpreted language as communication or as information; of the structure of public space, and so forth) (Derrida, 1992a,pp. 428429).

13 The duty, the categorical imperative, I would say, as much for the academic as for the journalist,and for both of them when they are the same person , is tomarkhumbly and clearlythat things are still more complicated - and that the reader ought to be aware of that (Derrida, 1992a, p. 429).

14 So, you see, I am a very conservative person. I love institutions and I spent a lot of time participating in new institutions, which sometimes do not

work. At the same time, I try to dismantle not institutions but some structures in given institutions which are too rigid or are dogmatic or which work asan obstacle to future research (Derrida, 1997b,p. 8).


5/16





Deconstruction affirms, above all, the other: the other that is always to come never present. Indeed, we might describe itas an openness towards the other (Derrida, 1984, p. 124). In so far as the other is other, it is of course radically other, whollyother15,radically heteronymous; inassimilable to the same. The deconstructive relation with the other is then a relationwithout relation, one in which the other remains absolutely transcendent (Derrida, 1997b,p. 14); an impossible relation.Deconstruction then is an impossible openness to the in-coming, the in venir, the invention of the other: the invention ofthat which did not appear to be possible; otherwise it only makes explicit a program of possibilities within the economyof the same (Derrida, 1987,p. 60). Derrida equates deconstruction, this impossible invention of the other, with justice16:Deconstruction is possible as an experience of the impossible, there where, even if it does not exist, if it is not present, notyet or never,there isjustice [il y ala justice] (1994, p. 243).

The affirmation of the wholly other, then, requires more than an openness to the other that we can see coming; the otheras an extension of the same, an extension of the present, the future present. It entails an openness to an absolute future(Derrida, 1993a,p. 90), an openness to the coming of the other that we are unable to predict or know in advance. It is anaffirmation of the other beyond the horizons of the present, beyond our plans, our anticipations, and calculations: Onceyou relate to the other as the other, then something incalculable comes on the scene, something which cannot be reduced tothe law or to the history of legal structures. That is what gives deconstruction its movement, that is, constantly to suspect,to criticize the given determinations of culture, of institutions, of legal systems, not in order to destroy them or simply tocancel them, but to be just with justice, to respect this relation to the other as justice (Derrida, 1997b,pp. 1718).

3. The responsibility the university and accounting

In ourexploration of theresponsibilities of theaccounting academia we will take as ourstarting point Derridasreflectionson the nature of responsibility, and in particular academic responsibility, as expressed especially in two lectures: The first,Mochlos; or the Conflict of the Faculties (1980) given at Columbia University to mark the centenary of the founding ofthe Graduate School, and the second, which will be our main source, The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyesof its Pupils, (1983), given at Cornell University. In these lectures Derrida develops his analysis of responsibility through areading of relevant works of Leibnitz, Kant, and especially ofHeideggersDer Satz vom Grund(1957).

Derrida begins his Lecture at Cornell by noting the associations, recognised in Aristotles Metaphysics, between sight, andknowledge, learning and teaching. He insists, however, that for knowing how to learn, and learning how to know, sight,intelligence and memory are notenough (1983, p. 4).We must also know how to listen and, metaphorically at least, wemust know how to close our eyes in order to listen well: listen for the other: Opening the eyes to know, closing them or atleast listening in order to know how to learn and to learn how to know: here we have a first sketch of the rational animal(1983, p. 5).The university, he insists, must not be sclerophthalmic: Indeed, no institution, whether it be the universityitself, accounting, or accounting education, that is concerned with knowing and learning how to know, should allow itself

to become frozen in unreflective reliance on an unblinking vision of what is. Such an institution must find ways, figurativelyspeaking, to close its eyes, become master of its own diaphragm (Derrida, 1983, p. 5), listen, inwardly reflect on its reasonsforbeingandonthevalueandmeaningofitsmostbasicactivities,andadjustitsview,(re)setitssights,setanotherheading(Derrida, 1990).This process, Derrida argues, must centre upon the institutions reflection on its vision of its raison dtre,what it can see or not see of its own destination, of that in view of which it stands its ground ( Derrida, 1983,p. 5).

The Universitys, raison dtre, as Derrida sees it, has always been reason itself (1983, p. 7).The University and verymany of our institutions, including we suggest modern accounting, exist to render reason, to explain effects throughtheir causes, rationally; . . .to ground, to justify, to account for on the basis of principles or roots (1983, p. 8):They exist inresponse to theprinciple of reason17. Derridaarguesthat there aregenerallyconsidered to be twoelements to theprincipleof reason, firstly the principle of non-contradiction and secondly the principle of rendering reason. This latter principle ofreddere rationem, which we might translate as give an account, says that for any truth for any true proposition, that is a reasoned account is possible (1983, p. 7),and furthermore entails that that reason mustberendered(1983, p. 8).Hesees this imperative, this must, as governing our relationship to the principle of reason: a relationship of requirement,

debt, duty, request, command, obligation, law, the imperative18 (1983, p. 8).A relationship that demands that: Wheneverreason can be rendered (reddi potest), it must (1983, p. 8).This must entails responsibility, it requires that we respond tothe call, or in Heideggers term theAnspruch, of the principle of reason. The call is not something seen, it has to be heardand listened to (Derrida, 1983,p. 8). And it is a call that our institutions, whether the university or accounting, may fail tohear. In order to hear clearly the call to respond to the principle of reason, to renderaccounts, the institutions must closetheir eyes in thought.

15 Every other is wholly other: tout autre est tout autre(Derrida, 1992b,p. 87).16 Deconstruction is justice(Derrida, 1994, p. 243).17 Not only does that principleconstitute theverbal formulation of a requirement present since thedawn of Western science andphilosophy,it provides

the impetus for a new era of purportedly modernreason, metaphysics and technoscience (1983, p. 8).18 Derrida argues (1983, p. 8) that we do not get to the bottom, or origins, of this must simply by thinking of it in terms of Kants categorical imperative.

Indeed he suggests that it could be shown that Kants critique of practical reason itself relies upon the principle of reason and its must. This must, thiscommand, refers to responsibility that should no longer necessarily rely on codes inherited from politics or ethics (Derrida, 1980, p. 14).


6/16





Derrida begins his Lecture at Columbia University (1980) by speaking of exactly this call to responsibility.A responsibilitythat originates when we, we in the university, find certain questions imposing themselves upon us, demanding a response:whereare we? And who are we in the university where apparently we are? Whatdo we represent? Whom do we represent?Are we responsible? For what and to whom? (Derrida, 1980,p. 1). The questions raised here concerning the responsibilityof the university can surely be applied, with equal pertinence, to the institution of accounting, we who are involved inaccounting education and practice, we the accounting community: Who are we? What do we represent? Whom do werepresent? Are we responsible? For what and to whom? To whom and for what do we owe an account? This responsibilityof theaccounting communitybegins with theemergence andrecognition of these questions andwith thedemandthey makeof a response. The community might refuse to face its responsibility, refuse to respond, but the structure of this appeal toresponsibility is such so anterior to any possible response, so independent, so dissymetrical in its coming from the otherwithin us that even a nonresponse is charged a priori with responsibility (Derrida, 1980,p. 1).

Derridadistinguishes between accounting to theprinciple of reason andaccountingfortheprinciple of reason. We renderreasontoreason when we give an account or rational explanation. Any efforts we make, however, to accountfor, or ground,the principle of reason, itself a grounding principle, in terms of reasons and principles will lead us in fruitless circles: theprinciple of reason says nothing about reason itself (1983,p.9). That it is impossible for the grounding principle of reason toground itself, leaves it, and the institutions it itself grounds, suspended above the abyss, the hole, theAbgrund, the emptygorge (1983, p. 9).

The new type of responsibility (Derrida, 1980,p. 6), the possibility of which Derrida tries to think in the Columbia andCornell lectures,andwhich we are beginningto explore here, contrastssharply with thetraditional or juridico-egological(1980,p.6) forms of responsibility that continue, for themost part, to dominate thinking about responsibility.The traditionaldiscourse of responsibility relies on a conception of the responsible subject, the ego, the conscious, intending, and rationalagent required to judge, decide, and act on its responsibility understood in ethico-juridical terms, in terms of a code. Thisnew responsibility, a demand imposing a need to respond, a demand that ultimately needs no egological mediation, isnovel insofar as it is conceived anew, through what some would call a crisis of responsibility in its juridico-egological form(1980,p.6), a crisis hasmanifest itself with some force in the institution of accounting, andolder insofar as it is theground. . .on which the juridico-egological values of responsibility were determined, attained, imposed (1980, p. 6).

In themodern juridico-egological conception of responsibility, theprincipleof reason is tied to, andexpressedin a certainrepresentationalism, in which responsibility, and being itself, is interpreted in terms of objects made present as representa-tions before a knowing subject that thus ensures his own technical mastery over the totality of what is ( Derrida, 1983,p.10), masteryof all it surveys: The re- ofrepraesentatio also expresses the movement that accounts for renders reason to a thing whose presence isencounteredbyrenderingit present, by bringing it to the subject of representation, to the know-ing self (1983, p. 10).This representational relation, associated with the principle of reason and the rendering of accounts,dominant in traditional forms of responsibility, does not reduce to knowing, nor to a metaphor of sight, sclerophthalmic orotherwise. Nevertheless, it is true that a caricature of representational man . . .would readily endow him with hard eyespermanently open to a nature that he is to dominate, to rape if necessary, by fixing it in front of himself, or by swooping downon it like a bird of prey (Derrida, 1983,p. 10). The traditional accountant who makes the horizon of his responsibility therendering of accounts, faithful representations, in the service of a rapacious and ideologically fixated capitalism is surelythe paradigm case of this caricature of representational man.

This traditional conception of responsibility and the principle of reason that grounds it is securely installed only inso far as the abyssal question (Derrida, 1983,p. 10) of what grounds the ground, what motivates, justifies, authorizesand gives meaning to the grounding principle of reason itself, is occluded, blocked-out. The traditional accountant, lostin his responsibility to faithfully represent the objects before him, has been paradigmatically resolute in his denial of anyquestioning of the grounding of the grounds of his practice. The traditional accountant as representational man has beenresolute in his resistance to the new type of responsibility that Derrida asks us to think, and resistant to its requirementthat we study and question how our traditional conceptions of responsibility came to be forged determined, attained,imposed (1980, p. 6), or we might even say arrested (Derrida, 1991a, p. 288). Take, for example, Solomons flat rejection ofTinkers (1985) insistence that accounting educators ought to encourage a recognition of responsibilities beyond the faithfulreporting of economic realities, responsibilities beyond thoseas traditionally conceived: The idea that accountantsshouldtake on the task of looking beyond market appearances to the underlying social reality is, to say the least, farfetched. Itis difficult enough to get consensus as to what constitutes economic reality (Solomons, 1991a,p. 289).

Thinking beyond our present realities, beyond what is, is difficult of course, sometimes too difficult. Derrida calls us towork towards loosening our hold of the present, enough to allow our futures to be something other than more of the same,enough to overcome the difficulties that are always associated with responding to the demands of the other, the demandsof justice. This is the task of deconstruction, which starts out from a willingness to allow coming of the event, the new, thewholly other. This does not mean that we should allow everything and anything ( Derrida, 1993b,p. 11): We must go onpursuing progress and emancipation, and that means that we must work against the return of the worst (1993b, p. 22).That worst for Derrida is closure against the event, the other, the future; its an ineducable repetition compulsion in thedeath drive and radical evil, a history without progress, a history without history (1993b, p. 22).

Accountants have not been alone in finding it difficult to move on from the comfort and constraints of traditional con-ceptions of their responsibilities. Nor are they alone in finding that they are under some pressure to do so. Derrida suggeststhat we might all be tempted to feel a certain nostalgia for a time when it seemed that, given the right kind of intelligent


7/16





application and debate, we might quite clearly determine our responsibilities as academics, as accountants, and so on: Anostalgia for the kind of clarity, certainty, that an academic, such as Solomons, could once have concerning the accountantsresponsibility to faithfully represent. We might be tempted to be nostalgic for a time when we could at least pretend(1980, p. 3)to know the terms in which we must debate responsibility, a time when the agencies and elements invoked indebate truth, knowledge, the public interest, accountancy, the university, and so on held a place in discourse that wasguaranteed, decidable, and, in every sense of this word, representable; and a common code could guarantee, at least onfaith, a minimum of translatability for any possible discourse in such a context (1980, p. 4).Derrida suggests the problemswe now seem to have in finding a common language in which we can debate and know our responsibilities is now endemicin our society, something more than a malady or a crisis (1980, p. 4). This problem is exemplified in the exchange, we havepreviously referred to, betweenTinker (1991)andSolomons (1991a,b)concerning the responsibilities of the accountant,conceived respectively as incorrigibly partisan and as ideally neutral. There is some vague appreciation that representa-tional faithfulness is at the root of their differences (Solomons, 1991b,p. 311), but ultimately it is clear that there islittle understanding between them19,and in particular that Solomon is quite honestly unable to make any sense of Tinkerscritique of neutrality in accounting, his insistence that: truth is not merely a scholastic or technical artifact, but an elementthat is unavoidably integral to social action (1991, p. 310).

Tinkers critique of a neutral truth in accounting explicitly draws inspiration from Derridas work. Derrida insists thatwe must not separate academic work, knowledge work, from reflection upon the political and institutional conditions andlocation of that work. Such reflection can no longer (be) an external complement to teaching and research; it must make itsway through the very objects we work with, shaping them as it goes, along with our norms, procedures, and aims (1983, p.3). He is critical of Kants attempts: to make a line of demarcation pass between thinkers in the university and businessmenof knowledge or agents of government power (1980, p. 14).He suggests that whilst it might once have been possibleto imagine realms of pure academic discipline in the university, shielded from power and solely concerned with basicresearch . . . knowledge, truth, thedisinterested exercise of reason, under thesole authority of theprinciple of reason (1983,p. 12),we now know what must have been true for all time, that this opposition between the basic and the end-orientedis of real but limited relevance (1983, p. 12).

Derrida rejects Kants efforts to somehow separate knowledge and truth from power and action, and limit the universityto the former, to: a power-to-think-and-judge, a power-to-say, though not necessarily to say in public, since this wouldinvolve an action (1980, p. 10)20. Kants efforts involve an attempt to demarcate a responsibility for truth and responsibilityfor action, that itself entails a demarcation, that Derrida finds untenable between: two languages, between one of truth andone of action, between one of theoretical statements and one of performatives (1980, p. 11). Following much the same line,Tinker rejects as schizophrenic (1991b, p. 305)Solomons attempts to justify a demarcation of responsibilities for truthandaction in relation to accounting. Solomons seeks to maintain a distinction in linguistic terms, between responsibilities toreport andto advise (1991b, p. 312): For Solomons, theresponsibility to report truthfully on what is, is the accountantsresponsibility qua accountant. What Tinker takes to be an unhealthy and ultimately untenable division, Solomons sees asvital to the integrity and practical value of accounting: What Tinker calls schizophrenia I call professional integrity (1991b,p. 312).

Derrida argues that it is now, more than ever, impossible to hold the kind of distinctions that Kant wanted between ontheone hand purescience andrationality andon theother technology; betweentruth andaction, between theinformationaland the performative and rhetorical values of language: we can no longer dissociate the principle of reason from the veryidea of technology (1983, p. 12).It is in facing up to the collapse, or impossibility, of these demarcations, to the integrationtruth and action pure rationality and the technical, he insists, that an ultimate responsibility would be, if such a thingwere possible, there for the taking today (1980, p. 11).Derrida suggests that this integration of the basic to the oriented,the purely rational to the technical (Derrida, 1983,p. 14), and the challenges it presents in terms of responsibility, isperhaps most obvious in relation to the concept of information and information technology. Nevertheless, the dominantrepresentationalist interpretation of theprincipleof reason retains a tight grip on many fields of information work, includingaccounting.

Those who make the instrumental and informational value of language the essential focus of their attention and studies,including the existing mainstream of accounting and accounting research, will always tend to work within and reinforce theboundaries of the dominant representationalist construal of the principle of reason. In contrast there is work that addressthe poetic as distinct from the informational value of language, studies which engage with the effects of the undecidabilityof language, and work that seeks understanding of how the values, norms, and assumptions that underpin our professionalactivities have been constructed: such work is at thecore of the academic project of critical accounting. Research that takessuch approaches to language andto tradition will tend to test, andchallenge, thelimitsand hegemony of thedominant inter-

19 At the end of this debate, we are as far apart as ever Solomons (1991b, p. 311).20 Derrida sees as inherently untenable, for example, the idea that the demarcation might be maintained by the restriction of the publication of the

discourse, or language, of truth: Reducing publication so as to save a rigorous discourse, i.e. a rational, universal and unequivocal discourse, in scienceand in conscience - this is a double bind, a demand in contradiction with itself, intrinsically in conflict with itself, as if, within the Kantian text, it were

already not translatable from itself into itself. This contradictory demand was not satisfied in the time of Kant. How could it be today . . .

? (Derrida, 1980,pp. 1112).


8/16





pretation of the principle of reason. Derrida advocates this kind of work as a basis for efforts to define new responsibilitiesin the face of. . . subjection to the technologies of informatization (1983, p. 14). Derrida is quick to insist that such efforts towork out new responsibilities need not entail a refusal of reason and certainly must not become a plunge into obscurantistirrationalism21 (1983, p. 14).

Derrida argues that this workof deconstruction and reconstruction of responsibilities is properly the task of what he callsa community of thought in the broad sense (1983, p. 16)22. It needs to be able to uncover the orientations buried in appar-ently pure unoriented research. The implication here is not that orientation is bad in itself and that it must be combated,far from it (Derrida, 1983,p. 16). It is rather that we must put ourselves in a position to adequately recognize and evaluatethe ends to which our work is directed: I am defining the necessity for a new way of educating students that will preparethem to undertake new analyses in order to evaluate these ends and to choose, when possible, among them all ( Derrida,1983,p. 16). A central plank of the educational project of critical accounting is, and must be, the building of a communityof thought that supports students in a wariness towards traditionalist dreams of accounting neutralitySolomons (1991a),and helps them come to a mature relation with the inevitably partisan (Tinker, 1991)nature of accounting.

This deconstructive thought must not be irresponsible, not simply destructive. Rather than destroy what exists, ourtraditions and values, its task is to enable us to think about their possibility from another point (Derrida, 1991a,p. 286)23.The new responsibilities that Derrida calls us to engage with are extremely precarious andthreatened anddifficult to meetprecisely because they must at once keep alive the memory of a tradition and make an opening beyond any program, thatis, towards what is called the future (1983, p. 16)24.When we try to think about the responsibility of an institution like theuniversity from another point we do not need to not set ourselves up in opposition to the principle of reason (1983, p.17)25.The (re)thinking26 of the responsibilities of institutions like the university and accounting must take place betweentwo poles: Thought requires both the principle of reason and what is beyond the principle of reason (1983, p. 1819). Themediation between the two is always difficult, and can never be made a matter of mere institutional routine. This thoughtmust hold memory, inheritance, and tradition and yet maintain an openness to chance, to the anarchy of the future: Theprovocation to think brings together in the same instant the desire for memory and exposure to the future ( 1983, p. 20).

The accountant and the accounting academic must think, and act on, their responsibilities, in the space between theprinciple of reason and what is beyond reason, between memory, tradition, and the future, and between professional rigour,competence, and respect for professional rules and principles and the willingness to put those rules, principles and pro-fessional values into question. Appreciation of this difficult situation, and the inevitable tensions and aporias involved, isnot always evident in the critical accounting research. It is lacking for example in the literature which sees the ethicalaccountant, the accountant who respects the rules, and values professional competence, as the problem. We see the eth-ical accountant as part of such a tradition, committed to the principle of reason, the possibility of which we need to thinkdifferently but which we certainly should not be setting out to destroy. Accountants need to rethink, but not abandon, thegoal of telling it like it is. It is clear, however, that the new responsibility Derrida is calling us to will take us out over theabyss27,into difficult territory where: Not onlymustone [il faut] calculate, negotiate the relation between the calculableand the incalculable, and negotiate without a rule that would not have to be reinvented there where we are thrown, therewhere we find ourselves; but one must[il faut] do so and take it as far as possible, beyond the place we find ourselves andbeyond the already identifiable zones of morality, politics, or law.. (1994, p. 257).

4. Responsibility beyond the already identifiable zones

Deconstruction is motivated by a heightened sensitivity and responsibility to the singular claims of the other; the samesense of responsibility to the singularity of the wholly other that for Derrida is of the essence of morality28.This moralityplaces ones singular responsibilities to the particular other, ones moral responsibilities, above or beyond ones responsibil-ities to society in general, above ones ethical responsibilities: The ethical then appears as a threat to moral responsibility.

21

Derrida suggests that in fact there is a good deal of irrationalism to be found in the reactions that the approach he advocateshas provoked from certainacademic guardians, in both the humanities and positive science, of the dominant interpretation of the principle of reason (Derrida, fall 1983, p. 15).22 A communityatlarge - ratherthan a communityof research,of scienceor philosophy, since these valuesare most often subjectedto theunquestioned

authority of a principle of reason (1983a, p. 16).23 The possibility of such deconstructive thinking is threatened by any extreme professionalization, especially one that regulates thought according to

the supply and demand of the marketplace and according to a purely technical ideal of competence ( Derrida, 1983,p. 17). Accounting academics arefamiliar with such pressures, reflected as they are, for example, in the demands of professional accreditation, and research assessment exercises. We needto guard against the constraints that a professionalized environment may put on our thinking: Beware of ends; but what would a university be withoutends?(Derrida, 1983, p. 19).

24 Thereis self-consciouslyemancipatoryintent in thisinsistence on the maintenanceof exposure to the future: I havenever feltthat allthose declarationsabout the end of the great emancipatory or revolutionary discourses were true (1993b, p. 22).

25 We may continue to assume within theuniversity,alongwith itsmemory andtradition,the imperative of professionalrigorand competence (Derrida,1983a,p. 17).

26 At the core of deconstruction and of this thought is a messianicity without messianism that deprives us of a horizon, or limit, of expectation butinsists that we keep open our relation to the other who is perhaps coming, but about whom we must know nothing in advance (Derrida, 1993b, p. 13).Nothing, that is, except that justice, in the most enigmatic sense of the word, is at stake (Derrida, 1993b, p. 13).

27

Where we find that our grounding principle in accounting and the university the principle of reason is itself ungrounded.28 We might even say religion, that is Derridas religion without dogma and institutions, his religion without religion (Caputo, 1997).


9/16





Decision-making in response to theidiosyncratic claims of the other always entails an undecidability of responsibility. Thereare always other others, each making their competing, and incompatible, claims. In responding to one other we inevitablydeny the claims of other others or of society in general. Commitment to moral action, like religious faith29,then alwaysentails the passionate embrace of an objective uncertainty (Kierkegaard, 1846, p. 182). It lies beyond proof, beyond closurethrough rational calculation, and the reasonable assessment of probabilities. It sets us out upon the deep, over seventythousand fathoms of water (1846, p. 182).

The moral imperative to suspend and go beyond the rule-governed universality of the ethical, in the name of a singularresponsibility to the other, the wholly other, has begun to find some recognition in the critical accounting literature. Somecritical reflection on that literature will help clarify the implications of theDerridean view of morality andmoral responsibil-ity, we have described, andhighlight some of the difficulties associated with its implementation in the context of accountingand accounting education.

There is perhaps no clearer recognition of the threat that the ethical can pose to the moral, in an accounting context,than McPhails paper The threat of ethical accountants (1999). McPhail deplores the existing regime of accountancy andaccounting education, which he argues engenders a narrow, rationalistic, view of ethics in terms of which the economicgood becomes coextensive with the moral good. He calls on accounting educators to help their students to question andchallenge accountings economistic ethic and to help them develop an active emotional sensitivity to the call of the other.McPhails position on accounting ethics is premised on David Humes view that morality is not fundamentally grounded inreason but in sentiment: Hume appeals to sentiment rather than reason because he firmly believed that moral judgementdid not essentially depend on reason but rather that it was grounded on feelings and passions (McPhail, 1999,p. 834).

McPhail argues that accounting, andin particular the rationalistic, indeed narrowly economistic,ethic it currently reflectsand reproduces, is deeply implicated in the maintenance of the prevailing capitalist hegemony. He suggests that that hege-mony reinforces andreproduces itself by exclusion of theother; other knowledgesand other interests. McPhail recommendsFoucaultian strategies of resistance to this capitalist hegemony that threatens to dominate humanity;threatens to lock it intoan impoverished sameness30. In particular, he recommends resistance through the cultivation of openness and responsive-ness to the call, the demand, of the other. The impoverished ethic reflected in accounting practice and education, insulatesanddistancestheaccountantfromtheneedsanddemandsoftheother,thesingularother,andthushasaperniciousinfluenceon the moral responsibility of their behaviour. The ethic that currently dominates accounting, and accounting education,inures the ethical accountant to his or her singular moral responsibility to respond to the unmediated, unrationalizable,non-contractual demand of the wholly other. The ethical accountant learns to be deaf to moral claims that do not fall withinthe narrow scope of an accounting ethic that makes the moral good equivalent to the economic good: learns to be deaf tothe others unreasonable demand. By acting ethically the accountant reinforces the hegemony of the same, and maintainsthe exclusion of the other, the new, anything that threatens the reproduction of the self-same, the current order. McPhailargues that the greater danger to humanity comes not from the minority of accountants who behave unethically but ratherfrom the majority of accounting professionals who appear to behave ethically! (1999, 836).He recognizes the ethical as athreat to the moral.

McPhail argues that accounting students are encouraged to build their ethical identities around a stultifying economisticmodel of ethical behaviour and responsibility that tends to foster anxiously narcissistic, instrumentally rational, selves, whocan present no challenge to capitalist economism and its concomitant injustices ( 1999, p. 836).He calls for a pedagogicresistanceto the rationalisticmodels of ethical identity,conventionally propoundedby accountingeducation,to be groundedin subjugated emotional/aesthetic knowledge (1999, p. 839).He argues that accounting educators have a responsibilityto give students resources to help enable them to resist the subjection of their identities to an instrumentally rationalistcapitalist order, closed to the other and entrenched in sameness: to resist the subjugating rationalistic modes of subjectionthrough constructing an emotional sense of obligation towards the other (1999, p. 852).

McPhail suggests that the economistic ethic that now dominates accounting can best be resisted, and the emotionaldimension of students ethical sensitivity most effectively developed, through the dissemination of a Levinasian ethic ofthe other. He relies heavily onBauman (1989, 1993)interpretation of Levinas ethics. Bauman finds in Levinas ethics arepersonalization of morality: a reformulation that lets morality out of the stiff armour of the artificially constructed ethicalcodes (1993, p. 34).On Baumans view, the Levinasian reformulation of ethics restores sentiment, inexplicable intuition,and feeling to their proper place at the base of any moral life: It recognizes that it is the primal and primary brute fact ofmoral impulse, moral responsibility, moral intimacy that supplies the stuff from which the morality of human cohabitationis made (Bauman, 1993,p. 35).

McPhail responds to this perspective by advocating resistance through an educating for the other, consisting of studiesthat raise awareness of the needs and demands of others and enhance sympathetic identification with the other. McPhail

29 Where belief is objectively secured there is no faith, no venturing of belief beyond the comfort of the known and possible, no qualitative leap intothe rationally opaque. For Derrida, as for Kierkegaard, religion is a matter of paradox (1846, p. 191) and impossibility. Their work makes unmistakablyplain the gulf that divide(s) the subjective orientation of the religious consciousness, that refuses to be contained by reason, from the detached perspectivecharacteristic of objective thought and enquiry (Gardiner, 1988, p. 101).

30

Resistance, on McPhails Foucaultian view of things, must become a way of life rather than a one-off event (1999, p. 854). It becomes a continuousmovement of resistance to the status quo, to the present, a perpetual refusal of what we are.


10/16





suggests that ideally an adequate moral education may require a kind of, gazing in the face of the other (1999, p. 858).Accounting education, he argues, is presently far from this ideal. As he sees things, this is in part due to the nature ofaccounting itself. As presently constructed accounting tends to treat self and other instrumentally, it is an instrument ofmanagement at a distance, and by distance, it creates and uses moral distance (Funnell, 1998; Roberts, 1991).In modernaccounting practice the face of the other does not confront us! (McPhail, 1999,p. 859). McPhail suggests that one way ofovercoming, or resisting, thede-humanisation of accounting (p. 859), its negation of theother, would be to employcreativeeducational strategies that would encourage an imaginative and compassionate recognition, and empathetic instatementor construction of an emotional sense of obligation towards the other (1999, p. 852).

WewelcomeMcPhailsrecognitionofthedangerthatethicspresentstomoralresponsibility,buthavecertainreservationsconcerning his analysis. We are sympathetic to his call for development of the emotional dimension of students ethical sen-sitivity as a wayforward foraccounting ethics. However, theidea that that ethics canbe grounded in passions andempathy31

seems,to us, to be at odds with thepurity of theLevinasian approach which resists any thearticulation/explanation of ethicalresponsibility. The empathetic approach may impose a sameness on the other: By articulating the nature of our obligationto the other (e.g., in empathetic terms) the others demand is domesticated and rendered in our terms. McPhails recourse toemotion and empathy seems like a prescription for the effacement otherness, a prescription for its translation into samenessvia the ego that empathizes, knows, represents and is responsible.

From our Derridean perspective, however, the primary problem with the analysis presented byMcPhail (1999), is thatit fails to adequately address, even from within a Levinasian perspective, the relationship between morality and ethics. Therelationship between ones singular and absolute responsibility to the particular other and ones social responsibilities. Theissue here can be conceptualised in terms of how one deals with the introduction of the third party; other others. For Levinasthe third party redresses the asymmetry of the subjects absolute responsibility for the other. The third party allows a limiton the subjects responsibility for the other, and facilitates a transition from singular absolute responsibilities to universalsocial justice. Levinas treats as relatively unproblematic the transition from on the one hand the absolute, incalculable,singular responsibility owed to the other, to on the other hand, the limitable, calculable, rationalizable, and generalizable,responsibilities of a social justice owed to all others. In Levinas view the thirds disruption of the subjects singular relationof responsibility for the other makes space for a social justice, albeit a social justice grounded in ones responsibility for theother.

McPhails reading of Levinas ethics is however strongly channelled throughBauman (1989, 1993).Bauman takes hisinspiration and lead from Levinas, but his analysis appears as essentially a sustained attack or critique of the ethicaland the political. Bauman presents the relationship between the moral and the ethical, between the singular face-to-face relation of responsibility for the other and the universals of reason and law, as essentially one of simple threat andopposition. He gives his analysis added rhetorical impact through his account of the history of the Holocaust, which hepresents as a paradigmatic case of the damage that reason, law and bureaucracy can do to morality of the face-to-face.He argues that by serving to neutralize morality, social processes, such as accounting, played a crucial part in facilitatingthe Holocaust32.Levinas too is concerned by the totalizing pressures in philosophy and politics in the 20th century, andclearly identifies the potential for a tyrannous collapse of moral to the ethical, the political: politics left to itself bears atyranny within itself; it deforms the I and the other who have given rise to it, for it judges them according to universalrules, and thus as in absentia (Levinas, 1961,p. 300). Levinas, however, constantly emphasizes, in a way that Baumandoes not, that we need both the moral and the ethical, the political, and that we need to make bridges between them.Responsibility, he insists, in the immediacy of the face-to-face relation, with the other comes before all questions of reason,equality and justice. The existence of the third, other others, forces such questions, the questions of ethics and politics,upon us. Forces us to move on from the ground of moral responsibility to ethical and political reason, regulations andcalculation:

Comparison is superimposed onto my relation with the uniqueand the incomparable, and, in view of equity andequality, a weighing, a thinking, a calculation, the comparison of incomparables, and, consequently, the neutrality presence or representation of being, the thematization and the visibility of the face in some way de-faced as the

simple individuation of an individual; the burden of ownership and exchange; the necessity of thinking togetherunder a synthetic theme the multiplicity and the unity of the world; and, through this, the promotion in thought ofintentionality, of the intelligibility of the relation, and of the final signifyingness of being; and, through this, finally,the extreme importance in human multiplicity of the political structure of society, subject to laws and thereby to

31 Empathy The power of mentally identifying with (and so fully comprehending) a person or object of contemplation,The New Shorter Oxford EnglishDictionary.

32 Baumans analysis reliesheavily on hisview of theholocaustas made possible by therise of instrumentalreason andbureaucracyin modernity. On thisview,accountinginmodernitycanbeseenasoneamongmanytechnologiesofmodernitythatcreatedistancebetweenselfandotherandtherebyunderminetheproximity on which morality relies. ForBauman, theholocaustbecame possible because the culture of bureaucracy along with itstechnologies such asaccounting, medicine andlaw allowed Nazi administrators to both distance themselves from their victims andto separate technicaland moral judgments(Neu & Graham, 2004,p. 578). The historiography of the holocaust is vast and contested (see e.g., Stone, 2008; Marrus, 1994).Whilst Baumans focus onbureaucracy and the technologies of instrumental reason is given support by many scholars of the holocaust (seeHilberg, 1961; Arendt, 1963),others are

attracted to different analyses and explanations. Some historians, for example, emphasize the role of the ideology of anti-semitism (see e.g., Herf, 2006),whilst others focus on the issues of group psychology (see e.g.,Browning, 1992; Goldhagen, 1996).


11/16





institutions where thefor-the-otherof subjectivity or the ego enters with the dignity of a citizen into the perfectreciprocity of political laws which are essentially egalitarian or held to become so. (Levinas, 1984,p. 168)

It seems to us that Bauman goes too far in his critique of reason, law, the ethical, and that his powerfully emotive analysisis not adequately balanced. His view fails to mediate of the demands of the moral and the ethical. In his writings the ethicaleasily appears as entirely pernicious, nothing more than a threat to morality. All our efforts to develop ethical codes, systemsof rules, and structures of accountability, then appear as essentially nothing more than mechanisms for the undercutting,silencing, and suppression of moral responsibility: Such efforts, as we see it now, may take no other form than that of the

substitution of heteronomous, enforced-from-outside, ethical rules for the autonomous responsibility of the moral self (andthat means nothing less than the incapacitation, even destruction, of the moral self) (Bauman, 1993,p. 12).

Bauman argues that morality has become substantially subordinate to instrumental reason33 in modernity, and thatmodernitywas thenecessary condition (1989,p.13) fortheholocaust which itself wasinstrumentallyrational. TheremedyBauman prescribes for the eclipse of morality in modernity is a return to an immediate morality of personal judgement helpseparate from rationality34,law, ethics, and rules, separated, that is, from the corrupting influence of social organization35.Bauman follows Arendt in using the case of the war criminal Adolf Eichmann to give some empirical substance to hisanalysis. Eichmann famously defended himself by claiming that he acted in accordance with the law, and presenting him-self as simply a functionary caught within, and victim of, a dehumanizing bureaucratic system. It is obviously difficult tothink and act independently in totalitarian societies and there would be no right to try, condemn and execute Eichmannunless there was some justification for conceiving of disciplined behaviour, totally conforming to the moral norms in forceat that time and in that place, as criminal (Bauman, 1989,p. 177). Bauman follows Arendt and condemns Eichmannarguing that we all have a moral responsibility for resisting socialization (1989, p. 177). Bauman goes on to quote Hannah

Arendt:What we have demanded in these trials, where the defendants had committed legal crimes, is that human beings becapable of telling right from wrong even when all they have to guide them is their own judgement, which, moreover,happens to be completely at odds with what they must regard as the unanimous opinion of all these around them. . . .The(se) few who were still able to tell right from wrong went really only by their own judgements, and they did sofreely; there were no rules to be abided by, under which the particular cases with which they were confronted couldbe subsumed. They had to decide each instance as it arose, because no rules existed for the unprecedented. (Arendt,1963.pp. 294295)

Baumanis clearthat themoralfoundation forresistancetosocialnorms,andfor telling rightfrom wronginsuch cases,can-notitself be social. Sociallaws andnorms, whether international or local,are essentially morally irrelevant andirreparablyrelative (1989, p. 178):

This relativism, however, does not apply to human ability to tell right from wrong.Such an ability must be grounded insomething other than the conscience collective of society. Every given society faces such an ability ready formed, muchas it faces human biological constitution, physiological needs or psychological drives. (1989, p. 178)

For Bauman, this asocial, context-transcending, capacity for distinguishing good andevil, is oneof thestubborn realities(p. 178) of the human condition. As he sees things, Eichmanns guilt and hope for a moral society lie in this universalhuman capacity which entails certain principles and the ability to resist (p. 178). From the perspective of Derridaspoststructuralistcritiqueofmetaphysics,aperspectivefromwhichweacceptthatthereisnothingoutsidethetextmeaningthat there is nothing outside the context (1999b, p. 79)the problem with Baumans conception of morality is obvious. Heconceives of morality, right and wrong, as an entirely contextless universal and requires that social subjects, like Eichmann,somehow manage to make present in their judgements the thing-in-itself of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. Fromthe poststructuralist, perspective there just is no morality outside of context.36 In order to have substance the moral impulsemust be mediated by an engage with socio-political context:

Bauman seems to be suggesting that to counterbalance the failure of modernity and to deny determinism humanbeings should create alternative cognitive and contextual frameworks of their own. This de-politicisation of morality,whichmanifestsitself in an oppositionbetween absolute responsibility and absolute non-responsibility, failsto recog-

33 Habermas theory of communicative action (1981a,b)offers a more balance critique of the progress of rationality in modernity.34 From the perspective of the rational order, morality is and is bound to remain irrational. (Bauman, 1993,p. 13).35 Allsocial organization, big or small, global-societal or localand functionally specific, consists in subjectingthe conductof its unitsto either instrumental

orprocedural criteria of evaluation. More importantly still,it consists in delegalizingand forcing outall other criteria,and first andforemost such standardsas elide the legislating authority of the totality, and thus render the behaviour of units resilient to socializing pressures. Among such standards marked forsuppression, pride of place is kept by moral drive the source of a most conspicuously autonomous (and hence from the vantage point of the organizationunpredictableand inimical to order) behaviour. As we have argued before the autonomy of moral behaviour is final and irreducible: morality escapes allcodification, as it does not serve any purpose outside itself and does not enter a relationship with anything outside itself; that is, no relationship that couldbe monitored, standardized, codified (Bauman, 1993, p.124).

36

Bauman ignores the contextual status of morality, by insisting that it belongs to a separate pre-determined, pre-social sphere of consciousness(Waxman, 2009, pp. 99100).


12/16





nise that there is no such thing as an independent context. It fails to recognise that morality will always be mediatedby political or social life. (Waxman, 2009,p. 101)

Baumans critique of modernity, has been clearly picked up by accounting theorists who have come under the influenceof his writing.Funnells (1998)grounds his analyses of the part played by accounting in the Holocaust, in Baumans viewthat in that situation: Morality was set aside and replaced by rationality (Funnell, 1998,p. 437). Funnell then presentthe Holocaust as an example of the application of accountings functional rationalist technology (Funnell, 1998,p. 440). Atotalitarian extreme in which morality came close, no doubt, to being entirely reduced to politics, legality and rationality,

then stands as a warning about the damage that politics, reason and accounting, can do. The almost obvious lesson, and theone that Bauman seems to invite us to draw from such events, is that we ought to retreat from politics to the face-to-face ofmorality, retreat from reason, retreat from legality, retreat from the pursuit of objectivity and neutrality in public spheres.The truth is however, that such a retreat is not an option. As Levinas clearly recognizes we must face up to the question ofthe political. We cannot dream away the third party and the political question it poses:

Doubtless, responsibility for the other human being is, in its immediacy, anterior to every question. But how doesresponsibility obligate if a third party troubles this exteriority of two where my subjection of the subject is subjectionto the neighbor? The third party is other than the neighbor but also another neighbor, and also a neighbor of the other,and not simply their fellow. What am I to do? What have they already done to one another? Who passes before theother in my responsibility? What, then, are the other and the third party with respect to one another? Birth of thequestion. (Levinas, 1984,p. 168)

We welcome the warning givenby Bauman and Funnell that the ethical is dangerous to morality, but regret their relative

neglect of real practical challenge involved: The challenge that arises with the birth of the political question. That is, how ininstitutions, like accounting, can we preserve a heritage of reason, regulation, and the pursuit of neutrality and objectivity,whilst at the same time resisting any totalizing tendency, any tendency for the morality to become reduced to politics.

We sympathize then with McPhails identification of ethical accountants as a moral threat. We recognize the temptationof the ethical (Kierkegaard, 1843,p. 115), which, even whilst it appears as a call to responsibility, threatens to undermineones absolute responsibility before the other: We recognize that the ethical can therefore end up making us irresponsible(Derrida, 1992b,p. 61). Nevertheless, it seems to seems to us that McPhails analysis is ultimately unbalanced in muchthe same way as Baumans. From the outset McPhail makes it clear that his position is premised on the view that moraljudgement is grounded on feelings and passions rather than in reason37.For McPhail there is morality, a matter of moralsense and emotions, arising in ones face-to-face encounter with the other. The moral responsibilities arising here, fromthe others wholly asymmetric call on the self, are singular, incalculable, and not open to reason or modification. Reasonand regulation then appear inMcPhail (1999)as essentially nothing more than dangers to morality, as mechanisms forthe exclusion of feelings, passion and emotion from the moral process, and it then seems vital that accounting educators

challenge the hegemony of rationality within accounting education (1999, p. 860). For McPhail the ethical accountant, theaccountant who constructs him or herself in relation to an ethos or telos38 of respect for reason and rules, is the problem.McPhail, like Funnell, has nothing to say about the bridge between the moral and the ethical, the moral and the political, inthe sense that we have discussed it above, nothing to say about the transition to the ethical.

Shearer (2002),in contrast, does deal very explicitly with the relation between the moral and ethics in accounting, andwe now turn to a critical consideration of some aspects of that paper. Shearer recognizes that without the organization ofpolitics and technology our capacity to be for the other would be drastically impaired: Indeed, without these political andtechnological structures of organization we would not be able to feed mankind (Levinas, 1986b, p. 28, cited by Shearer p.566).She is also keenly aware of the totalizing potential of the economic and the political, the threat it poses to the ethical,and is very concerned to find a practical mediation, a bridge, between the moral and the ethical39:The question, then, ishow we might put the economic system of means and ends more in the service of the other ( Shearer, 2002,p. 566). Shesuggests that we might best make accounting more responsive to theother, give it a moral dimension, through an enhancedsocial reporting for employee groups, customers, suppliers, and other parties with whom the economic entity contracts, as

well as environmental concerns and others with whom the entity does not contract (Shearer, 2002,p. 568).Whilst we have sympathy for Shearers objective, we have some doubts concerning the conceptual coherence of her

position andthepracticalviability of hersuggestion. Shepointsout that herproposal is not new, andnotes that The CorporateReport(ASSC, 1975) recommended that theannual reports of corporationsreflectthe entitiesaccountability to a wide rangeof affected parties (Shearer, 2002, p. 568). Surely it is clear that this kind of approach would constitute an essentially ethical,or political, rather than a moral intervention. It requires that the others claim be articulated, defended, justified in terms

37 McPhail takes this view from Shaftsbury via David Hume, and finds it echoed in Baumans analysis of postmodern ethics.38 McPhail (1999)primarily uses the term ethics, a Foucaultian sense, to refer to the selfs action, or work, upon the self.39 The usage of the terms morality and ethics in this paper,is transposed in Shearer (2002) and in Levinasswork generally. Levinas uses the term ethics

to refer to the face-to-face relation with the other, and he uses the term morality to refer to the regulation of social and political life: Ethics, as theextreme exposure and sensitivity of one subjectivity to another, becomes morality and hardens its skin so soon as we move into the political world of the

impersonal third - the world of government, institutions, tribunals, prisons, schools, committees, and so on (Levinas, 1986b,p. 29, cited by Shearer p.566).


13/16





that the system will recognize and accept. The claims involved here are essentially social claims, group claims, and theyinvolve a certain symmetricality, a reciprocality, with each other entitled to an account by justification of their relationwith the accounting entity, what they bring to it as employees, how they are affected by it as the public, and so on, that isentirely foreign to face-to-face asymmetricality of ones distinctly moral responsibility for the other, for the interests ofthe other. What seems to be envisaged here is an expanded accountability, essentially towards interest groups, rather thanresponsibility towards a face. This expanded accountability in its own way could be/become totalising in its exclusion ofthe claims of those who have no right to an account.

Shearer herself recognizes that accountability, whether economic, or of the expanded variety she proposes, is essentiallya social, or political, matter; a business o

deconstruction and the responsibilities of the accounting academic 2011 critical perspectives on...

Documents