Always different?: exploring the monstrous-feminine and maternal embodiment in organisation

Vachhani, Sheena J

doi:10.1108/edi-05-2012-0047

Cited by 19 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Through this reificatory process, lived multiplicities and their intersectional complexities become knowable and therefore manageable categories so that projected ('protected') characteristics can be co-opted as organizational resources in the service of the business case. The writings of thinkers as diverse as Bourdieu (Ozbilgin and Tatli, 2011;Tatli, 2011), Foucault (Ahonen and Tienari, 2015;Ahonen et al, 2014) and Kristeva (Vachhani, 2014) have been drawn on to inform an increasingly rich and theoretically sophisticated critique of this co-optation.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reassembling difference? Rethinking inclusion through/as embodied ethics

Tyler

2018

Human Relations

138

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connections, the paper draws on insights from Judith Butler's recent writing on the ethics and politics of assembly in order to re-think how inclusion might be understood and practiced. The paper has three inter-related aims: (i) to emphasize the importance of a critical reconsideration of the ethics and politics of inclusion given, on the one hand, its positioning as an organizational 'good' and on the other, the conditions attached to it; (ii) to develop a critique of inclusion, drawing on insights from recent feminist thinking on relational ethics, and (iii) to connect this theoretical critique of inclusion, re-considered here through the lens of embodied ethics, to assembly as a form of feminist activism. Each of these aims underpins the theoretical and empirical discussion developed in the paper, specifically its focus on the relationship between embodied ethics, the interplay between theory and practice, and a politics of assembly as the basis for a critical reconsideration of inclusion.

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confidence: 99%

Reassembling difference? Rethinking inclusion through/as embodied ethics

Tyler

2018

Human Relations

138

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“…It is important to note critiques of Irigaray's work which have primarily centred around being read as essentialist, elitist and inaccessible (Whitford 1991;Deutscher 2002). Despite these critiques, many have read Irigaray's metonymic and poetic writing as figurative rather than literal such that charges of biological essentialism are seen more as a strategic, rhetorical gesture to instal the embodied feminine subject into the text rather than a reflection of biological femininity or womanhood (Fuss 1992;Whitford 1991;Vachhani 2014). Taking what Fuss calls 'the risk of essentialism', that one could argue is largely tactical, Irigaray attempts to inscribe difference and conjure up an 'other woman'.…”

Section: Irigaray and An Ethics Of Sexual Differencementioning

confidence: 99%

Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent in Social Movements

Vachhani

2019

J Bus Ethics

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Using two contemporary cases of the global #MeToo movement and UK-based collective Sisters Uncut, this paper argues that a more in-depth and critical concern with gendered difference is necessary for understanding radical democratic ethics, one that advances and develops current understandings of business ethics. It draws on practices of social activism and dissent through the context of Irigaray's later writing on democratic politics and Ziarek's analysis of dissensus and democracy that proceeds from an emphasis on alterity as the capacity to transform nonappropriative self-other relations. Therefore, the aims of the paper are: (i) to develop a deeper understanding of a culture of difference and to consider sexual difference as central to the development of a practical democratic ethics and politics of organizations; (ii) to explore two key cases of contemporary feminist social movements that demonstrate connected yet contrasting examples of how feminist politics develops through an appreciation of embodied, intercorporeal differences; and (iii) to extend insights from Irigaray and Ziarek to examine ways in which a practical democratic politics proceeding from an embodied ethics of difference forms an important advancement to theorising the connection between ethics, dissent and democracy.

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“…As it is singular, I accept it only in the first person’ (Kristeva, , p. 1). Höpfl's influential work along with Tyler (), Phillips and Rippin () and Vachhani () on the abject and organization, highlight a major contribution of Kristeva's work: how meaning collapses but cannot be radically excluded and is thus tolerated, and where self‐other loses distinction yet we continually seek to re‐establish unity. The importance of Kristeva's work for my purpose here is that feminine writing is predicated upon a ‘desire to confront the problem of capture within the patriarchal text’ yet ‘to attempt to use language against itself is to create an untenable position’ (Höpfl, , p. 33).…”

Section: Kristeva — Tales Of Love and Radical Doubtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizing Love — Thoughts on the Transformative and Activist Potential of Feminine Writing

Vachhani¹

2015

Gender Work & Organization

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This paper engages with what it means to write love and poses the question: what does love do for feminine writing? I move beyond the concept of love as an ideology or condition of work (such as 'for the love of the job') and draw on a feminine poetics of organisation that highlights its disruptive potential. Love, in this sense, breaks the rationality and order of the 'masterful' text and alters gendered academic writing. The power of writing with love and effecting change in organisations is developed through a discussion of three feminist writers. The paper explores three significant texts:Kristeva's Tales of Love; Irigaray's The Way of Love; and hooks' All About Love in order to examine the problematic representation of love and to advocate a turn to an ethics of love as a basis for selfother relations that points us to defiant, activist and transformative forms of feminine writing. These writers bring to bear practical politics and possibilities through political interruption -namely through three modes: reconstruction, reclamation and activation and I discuss the implications of these modes for work and organisation, notably that writing and thinking the wisdom of love offers insight into how we creatively imagine socially just organisations of the future.

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Always different?: exploring the monstrous-feminine and maternal embodiment in organisation

Cited by 19 publications

References 43 publications

Reassembling difference? Rethinking inclusion through/as embodied ethics

Reassembling difference? Rethinking inclusion through/as embodied ethics

Envisioning a Democratic Culture of Difference: Feminist Ethics and the Politics of Dissent in Social Movements

Organizing Love — Thoughts on the Transformative and Activist Potential of Feminine Writing

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