Decolonizing inclusion in performing academia: Trans‐inclusion as phronetic border thinking/doing praxis

Abstract

In this paper, inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa, we draw upon our embodied experiences as non-white scholars from different parts of the South to examine our complicity and responsibility for inclusion in performing a Western, neoliberal, diversity-oriented, globalizing academia such as the United States' Academy of Management. We refer to the dominating practice of inclusion as universalist inclusion (uni-inclusion), where a hegemonic includer includes diverse subaltern others while blind to colonial differences. We argue that uni-inclusion has a dark shadow that perpetuates a "you are with us or against us" sentiment of white male superiority and violence, even as it elides the deep connectedness of epistemic, bodily, and material practices in the praxis of performing academia. Drawing upon our embodied and enacted experiences of tenures at Academy of Management as borderland scholars with relational reflexivity, we propose phronetic border thinking/doing praxis for trans-inclusion as a non-essentialist possibility of decolonizing inclusion. We share our understanding of how we have enacted border thinking/doing praxis so that it may provide pointers to pluriversalizing academia. Trans-inclusion is a neologism we suggest to indicate a liberating praxis for all in an era of decolonization and empire where diverse includers beyond self/other dehumanizing binarism engage within an ethics of caring and co-existence.

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“…Relational embodied care and intra- and inter-communal alliance building inform their activist practices, offering a way to reorganize our societies (Fotaki, 2021) rooted in corporeal ethics (Pullen & Rhodes, 2022) and political care (Fotaki, 2023). Few organizational scholars have engaged with postcolonial thinking (Dar, 2018), and few draw extensively on the work of decolonial feminists (Jammulamadaka & Faria, 2023). In a rare work, Vijay, Gupta and Kaushiva (2021) draw on feminist postcolonial literary work from India, to theorize organizational change defined by solidaristic transgression, unsettled habitation and counter-discursive memory as three modes of academic writing that contribute to achieving this.…”

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“…A unidirecionalidade Norte-Sul das cadeias globais de valor narcisistas lideradas por corporações capitalistas monopolistas (Trautrims et al, 2020) e há muito estruturadas pelo sistema mundial capitalista moderno, que incorpora a colonialidade e a racialidade (Suwandi & Foster, 2022), tem sido cada vez mais transformada e reformulada por potências ascendentes do Sul (Horner & Nadvi, 2018), que são sistematicamente retratadas como grandes ameaças ao futuro da História humana e da civilização global (Pieterse, 2011). Durante a elaboração desta edição especial, nós, como acadêmicos do Sul não brancos, passamos a nos ver como membros "problemáticos" da cadeia global de valor do conhecimento em gestão estruturada pela mesma matriz de racialidade/colonialidade capitalista (Ibarra-Colado, 2006) comandada por um sistema racista de orientação à diversidade reproduzido por escolas de negócios (Dar et al, 2020;Nkomo, 2020), cada vez mais "ameaçado" por seus próprios mecanismos benevolentes de inclusão de outros mais escuros ao longo da linha Norte-Sul (Jammulamadaka & Faria, 2023). Convidamos você, leitor, a ver esta edição especial como um diálogo, coproduzido e publicado por membros do Sul Global que buscam ser ouvidos e atendidos, incluindo aqueles que vivem no lado mais sombrio das cadeias globais de valor (Stovall, 2022), onde a escravidão do passado retornou.…”

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“…The North-South uni-direcionality of narcissistic global value chains led by monopolistic capitalist corporations (Trautrims, Schleper, Cakir, & Gold, 2020) and long structured by the modern capitalist world-system embodying coloniality and raciality (Suwandi & Foster, 2022) has been increasingly transformed and reframed by rising powers from the South (Horner & Nadvi, 2018), who are systematically framed as major threats to the future of human history and global civilization (Pieterse, 2011). During the construction of this special issue, we, as non-white Southern academics, started to view ourselves as 'problematic' members of the global value chain of management knowledge structured by the same matrix of capitalist raciality/coloniality (Ibarra-Colado, 2006) commanded by a diversity-driven racist system of business schools (Dar, Liu, Dy, & Brewis, 2020;Nkomo, 2020) increasingly 'threatened' by its own benevolent mechanisms of inclusion of darker others across the North-South line (Jammulamadaka & Faria, 2023).…”