Uncritical Constitution: CCO, Critique and Neoliberal Capitalism

This chapter is an attempt to rectify one of the main shortfalls of the constitutive approach of communication (CCO): the absence of neoliberal capitalism in its conception of both communication and organizations. Any theory of the social must at least consider the current social order at hand, which we refer to as neoliberal capitalism. Building on the theoretical premise that communication is a relational practice by which various beings relate to each other through other beings, we will question the character of this relation by stating that, fundamentally, this relation is formed and informed by capitalism. This chapter aims at theorizing a critical approach to CCO in several ways: first by showing that CCO scholars’ interpretation of pragmatism occludes a critical dimension in their analyses; second, by engaging with critical theorizing and its connection points to CCO; and, third, to show how the lack of a critical understanding of neoliberal capitalism is hampering the critical potentialities of CCO.