Totality and representation: A history of knowledge management through European documentation, critical modernity, and post-Fordism

This article presents European documentalist, critical modernist, and Autonomous Marxist influenced post‐Fordist views regarding the management of knowledge in mid and late twentieth century Western modernity and post‐modernity, and the complex theoretical and ideological debates, especially concerning issues of language and community. The introduction and use for corporate, governmental, and social purposes of powerful information and communication technologies created conceptual and political tensions and theoretical debates. In this article, knowledge management, including the specific recent approach known as "Knowledge Management," is discussed as a social, cultural, political, and organizational issue, including the problematic feasibility of capturing and representing knowledge that is "tacit," "invisible," and is imperfectly representable. " Social capital " and " affective labor " are discussed as elements of " tacit " knowledge. The history of Knowledge Management[3] [4] has been well rehearsed in terms of a series of primary texts in management (see, Prichard, et. al., 2000). The social and historical context of these texts in larger cultural issues of managing knowledge, however, is not well established. To establish such a context is not an easy task, for such an account may take a series of forms, from recounting the rise of knowledge management from flexible management and just‐in‐time production systems, to that of looking at the epistemological components of knowledge management and the history of these components during the twentieth century. The purpose of this paper is to give a historical and theoretical account of knowledge management in relation to critiques of production in Western modernity in the twentieth century, particularly in regard to the issues of language and