Ciborra disclosed: aletheia in the life and scholarship of Claudio Ciborra

Received: 3 October 2005 Accepted: 3 October 2005 ‘Life is a mess.’ Such were the wise words once imparted to me by my vastly erudite professor of the history of religion, Jonathan Z Smith at the University of Chicago. I knew them to be ‘true’. Even in my infancy as a scholar, I was repelled by the geometrification of human experience and drawn instead to the philosophers of the messy: Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gendlin. These thinkers were not intimidated by the intricacy and ‘lightness’ of being. Instead of finding it unbearable, they embraced the naked pilgrimage to raw phenomena. In that pilgrimage, stripped of intellectual armor, one must use one’s self to feel. Fully alive, one strives to keep one’s eyes wide open, to apprehend without prejudice, and – hardest of all – to unearth the words that justly reveal the meaning in the mess: One thinks of Merleau Ponty’s famous ‘notched like a lentil’ and Gendlin’s ‘felt meaning’. I did not appreciate at the time how much these initiations and revelations would burn into me and mark me forever as an epistemological exile from the main streams in my discipline(s), and, indeed, in life itself. Allegiance to the intricate lentil-like phenomenon of one’s own experience is a deserted departure lounge in the increasingly populous, frantic, cacophonic, and scientistic mass transit of social science research. A pattern eventually emerged in which I became a magnet for, and was magnetized by, scholars and students who were, somehow, fellow travelers. It was in this way, carving out a solitary career, that I first met Claudio Ciborra a quarter of a century ago. I don’t remember how we met or who introduced us. He was at MIT on a fellowship and an ardent devotee of the lectures of Roberto Unger at the Harvard Law School. Our first conversation was about ‘formative context’ and other aspects of Unger’s world view that captivated Claudio. I can see him leaning against the wall, his head nearly grazing the ceiling of my tiny assistant professor’s office in the old Baker Library at the Harvard Business School. His presence was always an engaging puzzle to me, at once elegant, austere, and slightly goofy; his brilliant classicist’s mind frequently shaded into that of the playful child. He dissented from the taken for granted routines one associates with adulthood and career. The precise contours of his life were elusive and ambiguous. He was a nomad. He took on different personae, depending on time and place and people – never one-dimensional, always polymorphic. He roamed countries, disciplines, and groups; he devoured and imparted; he played a significant part in each place and a central part in none (until, I think, he arrived at his beloved LSE). Often the stranger, he depended upon hospitality and was always quick to offer it too, though in his own unusual ways – conference organizer, restaurant and tour guide, menu advisor, intellectual critic. The mutual appreciation that grew between Claudio and me over the years was largely tacit. I don’t recall any careful discussions of the epistemological allegiances that bound us. We simply recognized in each European Journal of Information Systems (2005) 14, 470–473 & 2005 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved 0960-085X/05 $30.00