As we have noted in previous chapters, a key element that marks contemporary struggles in the workplace is the displacement of traditional forms of conflict. It is not only the labour/capital divide that animates organizational struggle (although that is still an important catalyst) but, rather, a complex admixture of concerns relating to dignity, gender, sexuality and so forth. The modern organization is shot through with a plurality of antagonisms, although some are more prevalent than others. In this chapter, the issue of sexuality is explored in relation to struggles around desire and the labour process, since it provides an excellent example of how the politics of labour and meaning have become so intertwined in organizations.

The struggle over the expression of sexuality in work settings reveals how struggles involve a variety of discourses that are often contradictory, counter-intuitive and even politically regressive. In relation to sex and desire, we find employees struggling to re-eroticize the practice of labour, but often in ways that may undermine other forms of struggle in relation to democratic representation, solidarity and remuneration (Fleming, 2006). In this chapter we hope to demonstrate how the notion of struggle reveals the symbiotic and interdependent nature of power/resistance, as a kind of libidinal dialectic that has rather ambivalent political outcomes.