Writing bodies and bodies of text: Thinking vulnerability through monsters

In this article, I make a case for the methodological value of fiction and feminist storytelling to writing practices in management studies as well as provide an example of how this might be done. The epistemological conditions of fiction stimulate feminist critique distinct from the possibilities of autoethnography; we can write with less fear, in new collaborative and beautiful ways, with an audience in mind. Fiction offers us the opportunity to conjure collective dreams, to imagine feminist futures—it allows us to tell stories that simultaneously capture and release us. In practicing this, I present a fictionalized narrative inspired by an experience I had as a first year PhD researcher at a business management conference. There is nothing special or unique about the story. It is made up of the mundane, and yet it is overflowing with thematic significance. The story touches upon the aesthetics of academia, a politics of care, gaslighting, heteronormative assumptions, sexualization, embodiment, and neoliberal feminism, demonstrating how a single interaction can be about very many other, contradicting and co‐productive, things. I offer it as a message of solidarity to those who, like me, may struggle to articulate what exactly just happened, but know in their bodies that it was not fair—that it did not feel right.

Section: Epiloguementioning

confidence: 99%

Carrie's first academic conference—On the possibilities of feminist storytelling and fiction in management

Winter

2023

“…Butler does not understand this vulnerability as an “ontological truism” (Murphy, 2011), but as a “relational social ontology” (Butler, 2009, 184). Vulnerability is therefore an “inherent existential experience” (Henriksen et al., 2022, 563) tied to our (human) bodies and the other human bodies around us (which we rely on not to hurt us). In other instances, Judith Butler has focused on the power of vulnerability as an epistemological frame (Butler, 2009, 1).…”

Section: Judith Butler's Conceptualization Of Vulnerabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While Judith Butler's ideas, especially those discussing gender, have been widely discussed in critical and feminist MOS (Borgerson, 2005; Riach et al., 2016; Tyler, 2019), her conceptualization of vulnerability has only just recently entered the field. Inspired by COVID‐19, feminist MOS scholars have debated the vulnerabilities made visible by the pandemic (Clavijo, 2020; Hales & Tyler, 2022; Ryan et al., 2021) and those inherent in academic researching and writing (Henriksen et al., 2022; Meriläinen et al., 2022; Plester et al., 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizing vulnerability exploring Judith Butler's conceptualization of vulnerability to study organizations

Scheibmayr

2023

This paper argues that vulnerability as conceptualized by Judith Butler is a useful lens to study organizations. Judith Butler conceptualizes vulnerability as both universally shared human condition and individually experienced, thereby describes how vulnerability is both a bodily ontology (we are all vulnerable due to our human bodies being dependent on each other to support us), and an epistemic frame (through vulnerability we can know), resulting in an ethical response‐ability (to not hurt one another). Vulnerability, though universally shared, is individually experienced and unequally distributed, because it depends on what Judith Butler calls “social infrastructures”. Organizations and their organizing practices constitute such social infrastructures and at the same time depend on them. Using a vulnerability lens makes it possible to study how organizations co‐constitute vulnerability and the positionality that they inhabit toward vulnerability.

“…Secondly, we present our reflections as participants and organizers of the sub‐plenary workshop at EGOS. With this aim, we collectively encourage the use of poetic inquiry in MOS and build on previous writing that addresses the need to reflect on and experiment with practices in academia based on collectivity and vulnerability (e.g., Henriksen et al., 2022; Merilaïnen, Samela & Valtonen, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling clumsy and curious. A collective reflection on experimenting with poetry as an unconventional method

Amsterdam

Eck

Kjær

et al. 2023

Self Cite

In this paper, we offer a collective, multi‐vocal reflection on using poetry for research purposes. These were reflections on an online sub‐plenary session organized as a workshop, which was held at the European Group for Organization Studies conference in 2021. During this workshop, the first three authors presented a step‐by‐step method for doing poetic inquiry and invited participants to apply it to their own empirical data or research praxis. The method was created in response to the marginalization of affect and embodiment in mainstream research in organization studies. Poetic inquiry aims to formulate specific practices of “writing differently” that assist researchers in their attempts to analyze and articulate their findings in embodied and affective ways. In this paper, we describe the method and bring together multi‐vocal reflections from the participants and organizers of the workshop on the affects of poetic inquiry and the (ethical) questions that it poses.