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

Abstract

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.