Abstract
Using a New Historicist approach of reading by juxtaposition, an analysis is offered of two types of text; one the autobiography of Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, and the other the Starbucks logo which presents an unusual two-tailed mermaid. These texts are read alongside a medieval French romance and other historical representations of mermaids. We draw on the work of Julia Kristeva in Powers of Horror (1982) to investigate the idea of the abject. We are using abject in this context to mean a human reaction to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of distinction between self and other. It is a space which is both feared but to which the subject is continually and repetitively drawn. The texts are explored to reveal how the abject Other, in these texts emotion, the feminine and the female reproductive sexual body, both fascinates and disgusts but cannot be excluded and leaks back. The reading contests and problematizes the customary discourse of CEO autobiography which is managerialist and heroic by uncovering a story of love, obsession and seduction which emasculates the story’s hero. Both New Historicist methodology and the concept of abjection are offered as means to develop interesting insights into discourses of organization.