'Queering Queer Theory in Management and Organization Studies: Notes toward queering heterosexuality' by Nick Rumens, Eloisio Moulin de Souza and Jo Brewis in (2018) 40(4) Organization Studies comments
This article suggests new possibilities for queer theory in management and organization studies. Management and organization studies 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 non-normative forms. The principal contribution of our article is therefore twofold. First, it proposes a queering of queer theory in management and organization studies, 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 management and organization studies field, through a shared attempt to undermine 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.
The authors argue
Since its emergence in the early 1990s, queer theory has mainly been used to examine the discursive constitution and regulation of non-normative sexualities and genders, especially those coded as ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, ‘bisexual’, ‘transgender’ and ‘queer’ (Edelman, 2004; Halberstam, 1998; Sedgwick, 1990; Warner, 1993, 1999). This scholarship challenges the status of heteronormativity as ‘the elemental form of human association, as the very model of inter-gender relations, as the indivisible basis of all community, and as the means of reproduction without which society wouldn’t exist’ (Warner, 1993, p. vii). Critiquing the normative status of heteronormativity and demonstrating the impossibility of any ‘natural’ sexuality, queer theory is widely regarded as a resolutely anti-normative mode of politics because it interrogates and seeks to transform social norms and relations of power (Jagose, 1996; Wiegman & Wilson, 2015).
Queer theory has also made significant inroads into management and organization studies (MOS) since its debut in Gibson-Graham’s (1996, p. 544) essay, which discussed its potential to disrupt the ‘normalizing effects of discourses of capitalist hegemony’. In MOS as elsewhere, queer theory has typically been mobilized to analytically subvert the heteronormative alignments between sex, gender and sexuality (e.g. Bendl, Fleischmann, & Walenta, 2008; Bendl & Hofmann, 2015; Bowring & Brewis, 2009; Brewis, Hampton, & Linstead, 1997; Courtney, 2014; de Souza, Brewis, & Rumens, 2016; King, 2016; McDonald, 2013, 2016a, 2016b; Muhr & Sullivan, 2013; Rumens, 2010, 2012; Steyaert, 2010). This scholarship aims to unsettle the persistent and harmful binaries (e.g. heterosexual/homosexual, male/female and masculine/feminine) that are discursively (re)produced within and through organizations and modes of organizing. In particular, MOS scholars have deployed queer theory to analyse and problematize heteronormativity, focusing on the discursive construction of ‘minority’1 subjects – again, typically those coded as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, or LGBT – within heteronormative relations of power, and fundamentally questioning this constitutive process.
A smaller number of MOS researchers have followed Gibson-Graham’s (1996) lead, tapping into queer theory’s anti-normative impulse to make wider methodological claims about its capacity to disrupt discursive regimes that constitute organizational phenomena such as ‘management’, ‘leadership’ and ‘public administration’ (e.g. Harding, Lee, Ford, & Learmonth, 2011; Lee, Learmonth, & Harding, 2008; Parker, 2001, 2002, 2016; Tyler & Cohen, 2008). In this less-developed strand of enquiry, attention to sexuality, gender, identity and sexual politics is uneven, with some scholars all but shearing off these attachments (e.g. Parker, 2002, 2002, 2016). Instead, they capitalize on queer theory’s energy as ‘whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant’ (Halperin, 1995, p. 62).
Noting these contributions in MOS research, we observe some missed opportunities to extend queer theory’s analytical purview to include heterosexuality as a site for enquiry. One reason for this might be that queer theory is often used to conceptualize a negative link between heteronormativity and heterosexuality (Beasley, Holmes, & Brook, 2015). Of course, there is good reason why MOS scholars do this. After all, MOS research consistently shows that heteronormativity constrains how LGBT people can live meaningful lives in and outside the workplace in constituting such minority identities as the Others to a heterosexual majority (Bowring & Brewis, 2009; Courtney, 2014; Ozturk & Rumens, 2014). As such, this type of scholarship is crucial and must continue responding to the calls made by researchers to address the ongoing plight of LGBT people in workplaces around the globe (Colgan & Rumens, 2015; Ng & Rumens, 2017). But, these very valuable contributions notwithstanding, we suggest that our discipline has yet to engage fully with queer theory for analysing ‘majority’ sexual identities coded as ‘heterosexual’. More precisely, the non-normative aspects of heterosexuality can be left untouched in MOS research that is concerned with how LGBT identities are marginalized, denigrated and excluded within heteronormative relations of power (e.g. Bowring & Brewis, 2009; Ozturk & Rumens, 2014). Unanswered questions remain about the provisional, contextually contingent discursive dynamics between heterosexuals, heterosexuality and heteronormativity. These missed opportunities are apparent not only within the MOS field. Sullivan (2003) and others (Beasley, 2015; Beasley, Brook & Holmes, 2012; O’Rourke, 2005) aver that queer theory research across the disciplines has often overlooked heterosexuality as an object of analysis.
Elaborating this, Beasley (2015, p. 143) submits that ‘queer analyses largely ignore heterosexuality, except as the starting point against which queer theory’s concern with non-normalization constitutes itself’. In this scenario, queer theorists neglect to explore how heterosexuality can be queered; to deprive heterosexuality of its status as ‘normal’ and examine the non-normative alignments between heterosexuality and heteronormativity. Relatedly, Beasley et al. (2015) argue that scholarly deployments of queer theory can conflate heterosexuality with heteronormativity by repeatedly demonstrating how non-normative sexualities are associated with LGBT subjects and not heterosexuals, leaving little headroom to imagine how many heterosexuals do not and cannot stand shoulder to shoulder as the guardians of heteronormativity. In these situations, an unhelpful heterosexual/queer binary can be reproduced (Cohen, 1997), one that nullifies queer theory’s anti-normative political impulse. This, in turn, works against Warner’s original proposition that queer is ‘itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual’ (1993, p. 26). By way of contrast, queer theory can play an important role in queering heterosexuality (Heasley, 2005; Renold & Ringrose, 2012; Thomas, 2000, 2009). To realize its potential in this respect, we suggest queering queer theory to expose its own normative tendencies and omissions and orient it towards heterosexuality differently.
In light of the above, the main focus of this article is the examination of MOS as a theoretical field. One of our principal aims is to encourage MOS scholars to engage critically with queer theory in new ways, in addition to and beyond examining the discursive constitution of LGBT identities within the normative field of heteronormativity, toward a queering of heterosexuality and its relationship with heteronormativity. We suggest that one condition of possibility for this endeavour is a queering of queer theory scholarship in our discipline. As such, after reading this article we hope MOS scholars might mobilize queer theory differently, to expand the remit of queer scholarship in the field that nourishes further opportunities for developing queer modes of organizing politically. To advance these proposals, this article asks: Why should MOS scholars consider queering queer theory?; What are the possibilities for using queer theory to queer heterosexuality and what might this involve?; and What are the implications of queering heterosexuality for engaging with queer as a mode of organizational politics?
The academic context in which these questions are posed adds further weight to their salience for MOS scholars. We agree with Pullen, Thanem, Tyler and Wallenberg (2016) that MOS is a discipline in which queer theory has not yet become exhausted and clichéd, that it still harbours potential to disrupt the normal business of producing MOS knowledge. In contrast, it appears that queer theory has become institutionalized in parts of the arts and humanities disciplines from which it originated. There, it has been chastised for becoming embedded within the academy (e.g. at academic conferences, in degree programmes and caucuses) which gives the impression that it has a singular and universal set of doctrines and outlook on the world (de Lauretis, 1994; Halperin, 2003). Seen in this way, de Lauretis (1994) famously questioned what was ‘queer’ about ‘queer theory’ as the relevant publications multiplied to such an extent that they soon outstripped any sense of what queer is or could do. If, as Halperin (2003) ponders, queer has become de-queered (that is, stripped of its anti-normative impulse) then queering queer theory becomes a matter of urgency. The oblique angle at which queer theory is positioned within the MOS domain provides a conducive context for us to maintain queer theory’s ‘capacity to startle, to surprise, to help us think what has not yet been thought’ (Halperin, 2003, p. 343). As an instance of this, we want to (re)connect with queer theory’s impulse to fundamentally subvert the ‘normal’ by queering heterosexuality.
The main contribution of this article is twofold. First, it adds to an emergent literature that advocates queering queer theory in MOS, whereby scholars are alert to and question the potential normativities that such research may otherwise produce. We hope this opens up a space for exploring how heterosexuality can be queered. In particular, we outline why, how and where queering heterosexuality can take place, so MOS scholars can engage with queer theory in reshaping our discipline as a theoretical field. Second, we contribute to queer theory scholarship more generally, which has been sluggish to interrogate heterosexuality, typically using it as a reference point against which queer theory’s anti-normative impulse is constituted. As such, we show how queering heterosexuality can be another site where queer theory and politics can come together in the MOS field; through a shared attempt to rupture sexual and gender binaries and challenge normative social relations. It is not our intention to re-theorize certain iterations of heterosexuality as ‘minority’ identities, a possible outcome if we designate some heterosexuals as ‘queer’. Instead we mobilize queer as a deconstructive practice (i.e. queering) to show how heterosexuality can be queered, with the aim of dismantling heteronormativity inside as well as outside organizations.
The article is structured as follows. To begin, we highlight the variations in how the term queer has been understood before outlining its emergence as a theoretical project. Here, we provide clarity on how queer is mobilized in this article, primarily through the deconstructive practice of queering. Next we discuss how heterosexuality has typically been mobilized within MOS queer theory scholarship. Developing a particular practice of queering heterosexuality, we then explore what this might involve along three fronts: (1) revisiting the relationship between heteronormativity and heterosexuality, in particular its theoretical underpinnings; (2) queering hetero-masculinities in the workplace as an illustration of where queering heterosexuality can take place and what this may involve; and (3) extending this into a methodological context by examining how we can queer heterosexuality in the research process. Finally, we discuss the implications for queer(er) political modes of organizing that could subvert heteronormativity before outlining our contributions to queer theory per se.
