Resistance by Analogy: How Dramaturgs Resist McCarthyism with Distancing Analogy

To deepen the understanding of institutional work of resistance calls for expanding the cases of human oppression. Our study focuses on institutional actors' work in resisting state-organized hegemonic totalism (Tourish & Willmott, 2022) – whereby the state dictates people into ideological conformity through violence and intimidation of violence of defining, detecting, and purging those who dare to be different – that few studies have attended to. Sensitized by the concept of analogy whose potential to disrupt institutionalization and resist oppression has been rarely discussed, we aim to answer the question: How do actors mobilize analogy to perform institutional work of resisting state's hegemonic totalism? We empirically examine a group of theatre/film writers' work countering McCarthyism through writing scripts for stage/screen. Our findings show five themes, namely fear genesis, fear effects, inquisition, execution, and resistance, whereby artists drew analogies between dramaturgical events and McCarthyite realities, thereby mirroring onstage/screen the atrocities and the absurdities that audiences were living offstage/screen and activating audiences' awareness and comprehension of the political actualities they were witnessing and enduring. Our contributions are trifold. First, we expand analogy literature dominated by cognitive explanations treating it as only a naturalizing tool for institutionalization by unpacking analogy's affect-mediated self-distancing effects on disrupting institutionalization process and resisting hegemonic totalism. Second, echoing Martí & Fernández's (2013) account of writing as a powerful artistic work of resistance, we further illustrate the anti-oppressive potential of dramatization that dramaturgs relied on to awaken audiences from the hypnotizing state propaganda. Last, we highlight hegemonic totalism as a distinctive, subtle, yet consequential form of organizational violence persecuting ideological heresy while pursuing ideological purity, which deserves more attention from organizational scholarship.