Abjection overruled! Time to dismantle sexist cyberbullying in academia

Abstract

In this essay, we draw on a personal experience of sexist cyberbullying unleashed, on social media, against one of our academic papers, to act up against increasing instances of cybersexism, in the academy. Reading our experience in the context of feminist insights on impurity and abjection, we assert the need to dismantle cybersexism targeting non-conforming academic knowledge, namely feminist. We also discuss the potentials of the cyberspace to provide opportunities for communal solidarity, as a source of empowerment for targets of academic cybersexism. Writing this text is an activist expression of voice and resistance, whereby we call our community to collective action and increased institutional support against sexism in academia, particularly in online spaces.

“Show us what you’ve got”: From experiences of undoing to mobilizing agentic vulnerability in research

“…We note that feminist research and research activism are both marginal in management and organization studies (Bell et al, 2020;Choudry, 2013). In recent work, Mandalaki and Pérezts (2021) argue that writing about sexism (and specifically cyberbullying in their work) is a form of activism, and an expression of resistance. They call for collective action and "increased institutional support against sexism in academia" (Mandalaki & Pérezts, 2021, p. 1) and note the pervasiveness of "sexist 'patriarchal ideologies'" (Mandalaki & Pérezts, 2021, p. 3) creating a responsibility for researchers to call out sexist behavior in academia.…”

Caring about the unequal effects of the pandemic: What feminist theory, art, and activism can teach us

“…Embracing this relational approach, we bring together non‐conventional theoretical and methodological papers to build on the momentum of writing differently for driving the change we wish to see in the academy and broader society (Beavan et al., 2021; Fotaki et al., 2014; Mandalaki, 2021; Mandalaki & Pérezts, 2021; Prasad, 2016; Pullen et al., 2020; van Amsterdam, 2020). In line with the focus of this Special Issue, these papers specifically add to these debates by illuminating how artistic and activist endeavors can be creatively integrated in academic writing to inspire transformative feminist explorations in terms of theory, methodology, and practice.…”

In lockdown with my inner saboteur: A collaborative collage on self‐compassion

“…If we aim to create sustainable wellbeing, especially within the frames of a neoliberal business school, it's necessary to take into account the embodied and relational aspect of organizing as a community (Fotaki & Harding, 2017). This entails acknowledging our vulnerabilities (Pullen & Rhodes, 2015) and interdependencies (Mandalaki & Fotaki, 2020) and resist normative expectations in academia (Lupu, 2021; Mandalaki & Pérezts, 2021). For example, in our situated case as PhD students we are learning to embrace the academic norms, which Ashcraft (2017) calls “submission to the rule of excellence.” On the other hand, there is the opportunity to do it “differently” by engaging with “sociomaterial inhabitation of power and resistance… from within… by writing‐enacting” (2017, p. 51).…”

“…In particular, we wrote in a dialogic way to explicitly “open up” about “something we might not have been able to utter otherwise” (Helin, 2019, p. 12) by listening into what we “bodily know” (Helin, 2013). We wrote as a way to “uncensor” our sensing bodies (Mandalaki, 2021; Mandalaki & Pérezts, 2021; van Amsterdam, 2020) as we investigated the episode of participating and organizing a group called “Becoming in Academia,” and the effect it had on us in the months that followed. The group was initiated by the first and third author, to explore our paths as PhD students collectively through artistic methods, and as a response to not being able to find spaces in our university context to do that.…”