FOR DEFINITION OF PLOTS

Who Knew What When?

Enron's plots. This cartoon by Kal is a Rube Goldberg network of Enron plots and inter-plots (relations between plots). You can follow stories tied to the chronology by clicking the dates in the this paragraph. Figure 1 is an image of the Metatheatre of American capitalism. There are many stages, many theatres, and TAMARA-esque network of relationship between themes of oppression and resistance. The stages are connected by what I call Antenarratives. The cartoon by Kal (2002) depicts the Megaspectacle scandals that broke loose once Enron fell off its pedestal, as icon of the New Economy (deregulated free market capitalism). Arthur Andersen overhearing a webcast call by Ken Lay on Oct 23 2001 (Dark Tuesday), called a meeting and enforced the document retention policy (i.e. shred it). Investigations were launched on Oct 18, 2001, when the SEC read the Oct 17th story in the Wall Street Journal about Fastow and the LJMs. The inquiries gear up on December 12 2001 (after the bankruptcy on Dec 2). The Congress responded to heightened hostility among shareholders (and voters). During the December to February hearings, there are calls for new legislation, including campaign finance reform, executive stock option changes, stiffer enforcement by the SEC, separating auditing from consulting by the same firm, and changes to 401 (k) plans. It is mostly rhetoric. As the megaspectacle scandal turns towards an inventory of which Republicans and Democrats received Enron campaign contributions, the Senators and Congresspersons actually send the cash to Arthur Andersen (some kept it or gave it to their favorite charity). Andersen is trying to figure out how to give the loot back to shareholders, especially pension funds. A curious thing happens. The Whitehouse begins to divert attention from allegations of Enrongate, by calling for investigations of the accountants. Accountants are supposed to protect top executives from giving in to their basic instinct (greed). Then President Bush begins to get tough on executive crime, and any malfeasances. Two WorldCom executives were handcuffed in front of many reporters. It is not your usual script for how white-collar criminals are arrested. But the theatre does seem to satisfy people who find Figure 2 just too complex an explanation.

One concern I have about Kal's cartoon ( Figure 2) is that it ignores the relationship among the players that goes back to the very beginning of Enron, to the beginning of history the Oil industry dialogs. There is a plot war going on in the media, government and Business College. The battle is fought over how to circumscribe the Enron plots. Do we construct a small cast of characters to blame for the collapse of Enron, or do we frame the plot more widely to encompass the cast of characters of the Bush administration with ties to Enron. Or, do we cast even wider, to include the administrations of the last three presidents with ties to Enron? Or even wider, to include the cast of characters of the Seven Sisters in the scandal-ridden history of the Oil and Electricity, and Natural Gas industries?

TEN Alternative Plots of Enron

The Ten Plots form a Blame Game Source

In Sum, the plots of Enron are multiple, and revised with each new historical situation, and each emergent antenarrative pre-understanding. The plots are in the eyes and designs of the analyst. The plots undergo historical revisionism to accommodate emerging events and possible exposure, such as the alleged fraud of off-the-balance-sheet raptors (e.g. LJM, Chewco, Condor, OB-1, etc.) as well as the political influence ties between Enron and WB, IMF, and WTO, as well as to democrat and republican politicians and administrators (linked by money, contracts, and Enron consulting and board appointments). If you are serious about plots, then go to the Nexus-Lexus on line archive and lay out the plots of Enron in chronological order as they are reported; then note the re-plots as a network of institutions from the Business College to the Whitehouse re-plot Enron to distance their own complicity. You will see that there are a multiplicity of strategic plots throughout the history of Enron (1985 - 2002).

Enron strategic plots for itself are not unopposed. Enron's plots are intertextual to all the other plots in the historical chronology. Reading the report SEEN (2002) will let you document the chronology of all the whistle blowers around the globe, whose voices were silent in the American press, until it became allowable for U.S. journalists to recharacterize the superhero Enron, and its superhero executives, as no longer the superstar of the New Economy (reporters do not report scandal of superstars unless the State first begins an investigation, then the firestorm begins). Enron is part of the weave of inter-plots. For example, in the 1990s Enron was the superstar character of the New Economy Plot, a plot advanced by Presidents Bush Sr. and then by Clinton, and in the 2000s by Bush (until the great Enron collapse).

In the recent emplotments, Sherron Watkins is the first whistle blower, but within Enron there were whistleblowers since 1987 in the Valhalla Rogue Traders scandal (Boje, 2002a) and inside Enron there were whistleblowers since the beginning of Chewco and LJM raptors, who were first ignored and then reassigned when they spoke their concerns about the hidden plot into the ears of Enron executives. In the Watkins plot, this character is turned into superheroine to advance the spectacle theatre illusion that there were no whistleblowers before August of 2001. Historical revisionism; quite obvious when you read SEEN (2002, SEE REPORTS SECTION MENU AT TOP OF PAGE) or the foreign press coverage of Enron in India and Dominican Republic.

Our point is quite simple. Enron is Theatre. Enron accomplishes its theatre to persuade and seduce employees, investors, and students into the willing suspension of disbelief through its plots. We live in what Boje (2002c) calls Theatres of Capitalism, in what Guy Debord (1967) calls the Society of the Spectacle and what our friends A. Fuat Firat and Nikhilesh Dholakia call the Political Economy of Theatres of Consumption (1998).