Queer Studies and Organizational Communication

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie McDonald ◽  
Sean C. Kenney
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Communication ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Diversity Management ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Queer Of Color ◽  
Organizational Scholarship

As a subfield, organizational communication has been relatively slow to engage with queer theory. However, a robust literature on queer organizational scholarship has emerged over the past decade, since the 2010s, in both organizational communication and the allied field of critical management studies. Adopting a queer theoretical lens to the study of organizational communication entails queering one’s understandings of organizational life by questioning what is considered to be normal and taken for granted. Engaging with queer theory in organizational communication also implies exposing and critiquing heteronormativity in organizations, viewing difference as a constitutive feature of organizing, adopting an anti-categorical approach to difference, and understanding identity as fluid and performative. To date, organizational scholars have mobilized queer theory to queer how gender and sexuality are conceptualized in organizational research, queer dominant understandings of leadership, queer the notion of diversity management, queer the “closet” metaphor and understandings of how individuals negotiate the disclosure of nonnormative identities at work, and queer organizational research methods. Moving forward, organizational scholars can continue to advance queer scholarship by mobilizing queer theory to highlight queer voices in empirical research, interrogating whiteness in queer organizational scholarship by centering queer of color subjectivities, and continuing to queer organizational research and queer theory by subjecting both to critical interrogation.

Queer Youth and Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Dyer
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Sex Education ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
Queer Youth ◽  
Lgbtq Studies ◽  
Intellectual Traditions

Discussions surrounding the rights, desires, and subjectivities of queer youth in education have a history marked by both controversy and optimism. Many researchers, practitioners, and teachers who critically examine the role of education in the lives of queer youth insist that the youth themselves should be involved in setting the terms of debate surrounding if and how they should be included in sites of education. This is important because the ways in which their needs and subjectivities are conceptualized have a direct impact on the futures that queer youth imagine for themselves and for others. For example, the furious and impassioned debates about sex education in schooling are also to do with the amount of empathy we have for queer youth. Thus, sex education is a frequent point of analysis in literature on queer youth in education. Literature on queer youth and education also helpfully demonstrates how racialization, gender, neoliberalism, and settler-colonialism permeate discourses of queer inclusion and constitute the conditions of both acceptance and oppression for queer youth. While queer studies has at times sharpened perceptions of queer youth’s subjective and systemic experiences in education, it cannot be collapsed into a unified theory of sexuality because it too is ripe with debate, variation, and contradiction. As many scholars and intellectual traditions make clear, the global and transnational dimensions of gender and sexuality cannot be subsumed into a unified taxonomy of desire or subject formation. More ethical interactions between teachers, peers, and queer youth are needed because our theories of queer desire and the discourses we attach to them evince material realities for queer youth. Despite the often prevailing insistence that queer youth belong in educational institutions, homophobia and heteronormativity continue to make inclusion a complicated landscape. In recognition of these dynamics, literature in the field of educational studies also insists that some queer youth find hope in education. Withdrawing advocacy and representation for queer, trans, and nonbinary youth in educational settings becomes dangerous when it creates a terrain for isolation and shame. Importantly, queer theory and LGBTQ studies have conceptualized the needs of queer youth in ways that emphasize education as a space wrought with emotion, power, and desire. Early theorizing of non-normative sexual desire continues to set the stage for contemporary discussions of schools as spaces of power and repression. That is, histories of activism, knowledge, and policy construction have made the present conditions of both inclusion and exclusion for queer youth. Contemporary debates about belonging and marginalization in schools are made from the residues and endurance of earlier formations of gender and race.

Queer Perspectives Fuelling Diversity Management Discourse

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regine Bendl ◽  
Roswitha Hofmann
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Codes Of Conduct ◽  
Diversity Management ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Management Discourse ◽  
Insight Into

Diversity management discourse shows that theoretical concepts and strategies often neglect issues of ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘sexuality’, and unwittingly reinforce patterns of exclusion in organizational practice. This chapter considers the diversity category ‘sexual orientation’ within a broader theoretical framework, by highlighting the constitutive connectedness between ‘sex’, ‘gender’, and ‘sexuality’. It uses queer theoretical concepts to give insight into the normative intersections of ‘sex’, ‘gender’, and ‘sexuality’ and, thus, heteronormative phenomena in diversity management discourse. Based on an exploration of multinational corporations (MNCs) and their codes of conduct (CoCs) it highlights the interventional and transformative potential of queer theory as an approach to DM discourse.

Queer theory and diversity management: Reading codes of conduct from a queer perspective

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 625-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regine Bendl ◽  
Alexander Fleischmann ◽  
Roswitha Hofmann
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Codes Of Conduct ◽  
Diversity Management ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Management Discourse ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractQueer theory is a relatively new theoretical approach in organizational discourse that we think can uncover power relations and normative and hierarchical processes in diversity management discourse. ‘Heteronormativity’ and ‘performativity’, core concepts of queer theory, critique categorization and fixed identities and thereby problematize and broaden perspectives on current diversity management discourse, especially those associated with organizational constructions of diversity dimensions. In this article, we focus on the discursive and intersectional construction of subject positions and identities within organizations by drawing upon a queer theoretical framework to analyze three companies' codes of conduct that claim to create an inclusive work environment. The deconstructive analysis of these discursive artifacts emphasizes the intersectional power dynamics of and between the categories of sex, gender and sexuality, and can be taken as a point of departure for questioning the heteronormative arrangements of diversity management practices.

scholarly journals Un/doing Chrononormativity: Negotiating Ageing, Gender and Sexuality in Organizational Life

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (11) ◽  
pp. 1677-1698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Riach ◽  
Nicholas Rumens ◽  
Melissa Tyler
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
Organizational Settings ◽  
Lgbt People ◽  
The Impact

This paper is based on a series of ‘anti-narrative’ interviews designed to explore the ways in which lived experiences of age, gender and sexuality are negotiated and narrated within organizations in later life. It draws on Judith Butler’s performative ontology of gender, particularly her account of the ways in which the desire for recognition is shaped by heteronormativity, considering its implications for how we study ageing and organizations. In doing so, the paper develops a critique of the impact of heteronormative life course expectations on the negotiation of viable subjectivity within organizational settings. Focusing on the ways in which ‘chrononormativity’ shapes the lived experiences of ageing within organizations, at the same time as constituting an organizing process in itself, the paper draws on Butler’s concept of ‘un/doing’ in its analysis of the simultaneously affirming and negating organizational experiences of older self-identifying LGBT people. The paper concludes by emphasizing the theoretical potential of a performative ontology of ageing, gender and sexuality for organization studies, as well as the methodological insights to be derived from an ‘anti-narrative’ approach to organizational research, arguing for the need to develop a more inclusive politics of ageing within both organizational practice and research.

Queer theory and diversity management: Reading codes of conduct from a queer perspective

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 625-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regine Bendl ◽  
Alexander Fleischmann ◽  
Roswitha Hofmann
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Codes Of Conduct ◽  
Diversity Management ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Management Discourse ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractQueer theory is a relatively new theoretical approach in organizational discourse that we think can uncover power relations and normative and hierarchical processes in diversity management discourse. ‘Heteronormativity’ and ‘performativity’, core concepts of queer theory, critique categorization and fixed identities and thereby problematize and broaden perspectives on current diversity management discourse, especially those associated with organizational constructions of diversity dimensions. In this article, we focus on the discursive and intersectional construction of subject positions and identities within organizations by drawing upon a queer theoretical framework to analyze three companies' codes of conduct that claim to create an inclusive work environment. The deconstructive analysis of these discursive artifacts emphasizes the intersectional power dynamics of and between the categories of sex, gender and sexuality, and can be taken as a point of departure for questioning the heteronormative arrangements of diversity management practices.

Queering methodologies and organizational research: disrupting, critiquing, and exploring

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Research Questions

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the methodological implications of queering organizational research. The author examines three related questions: what does queering organizational research entail?; how have organizational scholars queered research to date?; and how does queering organizational research and methodologies advance our understandings of organizing processes? Design/methodology/approach The paper begins with an overview of queer theory, which is followed by a review of the ways in which organizational research and methodologies have been and can be queered. The paper concludes with a discussion of the value of queering organizational research and methodologies and offers research questions that can guide future research that draws from queer theory. Findings The author claims that methodologies are queered through a researcher’s commitment to enacting the philosophical assumptions of queer theory in a research project. Much of the value of queering methodologies lies in its disruption and critique of conventional research practices, while enabling us to explore new ways of understanding organizational life. Originality/value Queer theory is still nascent but growing in organizational research. To date, there has been little consideration of the methodological implications of queering organizational research. This paper discusses these implications and can thus guide future research that is informed by queer theory.

scholarly journals BAER, Brian James and KAINDL, Klaus. Queering Translation, Translating the Queer. Theory, Practice, Activism. New York & London, Routledge, 2018, 234 pp., ISBN: 9780367365677

Hikma ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-450
Author(s):  
Gonzalo Iturregui Gallardo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Gender And Sexuality Studies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Cross Fertilization ◽  
Shed Light

This groundbreaking work is the first full book-length publication to critically engage in the emerging field of research on the queer aspects of translation and interpreting studies. The volume presents a variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives through fifteen contributions from both established and up-and-coming scholars in the field to demonstrate the interconnectedness between translation and queer aspects of sex, gender, and identity. The book begins with the editors’ introduction to the state of the field, providing an overview of both current and developing lines of research, and builds on this foundation to look at this research more closely, grouped around three different sections: Queer Theorizing of Translation; Case Studies of Queer Translations and Translators; and Queer Activism and Translation. This interdisciplinary approach seeks to not only shed light on this promising field of research but also to promote cross fertilization between these disciplines towards further exploring the intersections between queer studies and translation studies, making this volume key reading for students and scholars interested in translation studies, queer studies, politics, and activism, and gender and sexuality studies.

What's queer about Internet studies now?

First Monday ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jen Jack Gieseking ◽  
Jessa Lingel ◽  
Daniel Cockayne
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Internet Studies ◽  
Lgbtq Studies ◽  
Reading List ◽  
The Past ◽  
Online Spaces

Queerness owes much to the past, a past we can see playing out again and again in physical and online spaces. More than seeing the Internet as a tool for LGBTQ activism alone, our collective dialogue asks: what’s queer about the Internet? The interventions by queer theory and LGBTQ studies into Internet studies begets a new turn of phrase and a renewed queer studies in a terrain that queers have always made their own, i.e., online: Queer Internet Studies (QIS). The proceedings for the Queer Internet Studies Symposium 2 (QIS2) in Philadelphia in 2017 and the papers inspired from that gathering make up the heart of this collection. We also include a recommended reading list of sources that have inspired us in QIS. We planned the symposium and special issue without a prediction of what participants would say or do, and we were (and remain) shocked and encouraged by the excitement for making and sharing a space with, for, and about queerness. In its practice, QIS is a radical, fluid practice and project that remains porous still, even in the naming that we grant it here.

Forgetting Sedgwick

PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (2) ◽  
pp. 370-373
Author(s):  
Laura Doan
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Academic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Blind Spots

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was not a historian of sexuality, but she was keenly aware of the historicity of sexuality and erotic desire in ways unlike other major figures in queer theory. This fact has gone largely unnoticed in queer studies, a field dominated by literary and cultural critics that has an uneasy relation with academic history. An example of the historicity of Sedgwick's theories of sexuality can be seen in her famous critique of Foucault's Great Paradigm Shift—that imaginary moment in the late nineteenth century when the category of the modern homosexual was thought to displace the category of the sodomite (Epistemology 44). The formulation of axiom 5 in Epistemology of the Closet—“the historical search for a Great Paradigm Shift may obscure the present conditions of sexual identity” (44)—reveals a deep consciousness of the “irreducible historicity of all things … discerning the time-and-place specificity of a thing, identifying the ways in which it relates to its context or milieu, and determining the extent to which it is both enabled and hamstrung by this relationship,” to cite the historian Hayden White's description of history as critique (224). If Foucauldian genealogy (or a “history of the present”) “begins with an analysis of blind spots in our current understanding, or with a problematization of what passes for ‘given’ in contemporary thought” (Halperin 13), it is vital, as Sedgwick puts it, to “denaturalize the present, rather than the past” (Epistemology 48). Sedgwick's vantage point on a queer past pivots around “homosexuality as we conceive of it today” (45), a phrase as resonant now in sexuality studies as was Foucault's reference to the homosexual as a species (Foucault 43). So entrenched are the modern categories of identity that Sedgwick repeats the phrase over and over in her cogent analysis of our current conceptions of sexuality. Such insistent differentiation between an alien past and an equally—if not more—alien present, the distinction between “them” and “us,” reverberates across the history of homosexuality. Consider, for instance, Matt Houlbrook's discussion of men who refrain from using “‘gay’ in the way we would use the term today” (xiii) or Jonathan Ned Katz's understanding of the presentness of our present standpoint—“what we today recognize as erotic feelings and acts” (6).

(Un)Disciplining the Graduate Student, and a Queer Otherwise

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 144-146
Author(s):  
Sean Charles Kenney
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Communication ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Graduate Student

This essay reflects on the walkout during the 2019 National Communication Association Organizational Communication Division's Top Paper Panel. I draw upon queer theory to discuss the impacts of disciplinary norms and whiteness in organizational communication.

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