PhD Oral Exam - Dilara Baysal, Social and Cultural Analysis

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

This thesis explores how managerial practices and workers operate within capitalist work relations, focusing on how they influence and are influenced by the production of subjectivities across various historical and social contexts. Central to this study is the concept of living labour—the dynamic and creative capacity of workers to generate value through their labour. In capitalist economies, living labour is managed through strategies that aim to maximize productivity and efficiency, often involving control, coordination, and standardization. Consequently, management’s role is to organize and regulate living labour in alignment with the interests of capital, converting workers' potential into measurable outputs. This process reflects a core principle of capitalism: that labour must be continually transformed and subsumed by capital to generate profit.

Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of desire as a productive force that generates connections and drives creation between people, objects, and systems, I argue that managerial practices play a critical role in shaping the ongoing formation of new configurations and possibilities. By theorizing the production of subjectivity as an open process continually actualized in the social realm, this project uncovers how social relations—whether in early industrial factories or contemporary tech offices—become terrains of struggle. Through interviews with managerial workers in tech startups, this research examines the affective and immaterial dimensions of managerial labour, showing how it functions as a vital component in securing the conditions necessary for capital accumulation.