Queering Space and Organising with Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology

Vitry, Chloe (2021) Queering Space and Organising with Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology. Gender, Work and Organization, 28 (3). pp. 935-949. ISSN 0968-6673

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Abstract

The intended contribution of this paper is to add to the growing body of work ‘queering’ organisation studies by exploring how bodies, spaces and organising can be ‘queered’. I draw on Sara Ahmed'S (2006) Queer Phenomenology to explore the relationship between bodies and the organisation of space, in capitalist as well as alternative modes of organising. Through the analysis of semi‐structured interviews with the three organisers of a queer feminist group in a British medium‐size city, I explore how we might resist capitalist and other normative spaces by queering them, and how these queered spaces open up fields of action for queerer modes of organising. In so doing I further the critical project of Queer Theory in Management and Organisation Studies to interrogate the norms that give shape to organisational spaces and processes, and the tensions that might arise when refusing their straightening effects.