posted on 2017-11-28, 12:05authored byNick Rumens, Eloisio Moulin de Souza, Jo Brewis
This article suggests new possibilities for queer theory in management and organization
studies, hereafter MOS. MOS has tended to use queer theory as a conceptual resource
for studying the workplace experience of ‘minorities’ such as gay men, lesbians and
those identifying as bisexual or transgender, often focusing on how heteronormativity
shapes the discursive constitution of sexualities and genders coded as such. This
deployment is crucial and apposite but it can limit the analytical reach of queer theory,
neglecting other objects of analysis like heterosexuality. Potentially, MOS queer theory
scholarship could be vulnerable to criticism about overlooking queer theory as a
productive site for acknowledging both heterosexuality’s coercive aspects and its nonnormative
forms. The principal contribution of our article is therefore twofold. First, it
proposes a queering of queer theory in MOS, whereby scholars are alert to and question
the potential normativities that such research can produce, opening up a space for
exploring how heterosexuality can be queered. Second, we show how queering
heterosexuality can be another site where queer theory and politics come together in the
MOS field through a shared attempt to rupture sexual and gender binaries, and
challenge normative social relations. The article concludes by outlining the political
implications of queering heterosexuality for generating modes of organizing in which
heterosexuality can be experienced as non-normative and how this might rupture and
dismantle heteronormativity.
History
Citation
Organization Studies, 2018
Author affiliation
/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, ARTS AND HUMANITIES/School of Management
Version
AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Published in
Organization Studies
Publisher
SAGE Publications, European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS)