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Isabelle Albisser
Last Name
Albisser
First name
Isabelle
Email
isabelle.albisser@unisg.ch
Phone
+41712242687
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PublicationUndoing whiteness in organizations by white bodies? From affective dissonance to anti-racist praxis( 2024-03-07)Drawing on Nkomo’s call to address race in organizations, I will elaborate on the im/possibility of undoing whiteness in organizations by white bodies. Understanding whiteness as a system of power that privileges white bodies over non-white bodies, and which makes white people ‘feel at home’ (Ahmed), I elaborate on how to undo hegemonic structures of whiteness from the privileged position of the white person. I base my argument on critical race and critical whiteness scholars who show that the white person’s affects and practices are always entangled with racist structures and white hegemony. They highlight the danger of reifying the hegemonic position of the ‘good white subject’ by claiming the white person as either racist or non-racist. I will draw on the rich theorizing by women of colour scholars such as Gloria Anzaldúa and Maria Lugones. They conceptualize the subjectivity of the marginalized self as multilayered, contradictory and simultaneously within and beyond hegemonic narratives of identity. Starting point for their theorizing is the contradictory experience of being marginalized and made ‘the other’ within white hegemony, while not identifying with ‘the other’ at the same time. The ‘affective dissonance’ (Clare Hemmings) experiencing a self between such binary identity constructions and a self beyond these invocations leads to 'active subjectivity' (Lugones) as a form of resistant agency. I will make use of these perspectives on multiple and active subjectivity to elaborate on the (self-)critical white person as both racist and non-racist at the same time. I argue, that affects of dissonance are moments of ‘active subjectivity’ by privileged subjects. Awkward and uncomfortable feelings of white bodies can lay the groundwork for anti-racist praxis and the undoing of hegemonic whiteness in organizations. Ahmed, S. (2007). A phenomenology of whiteness. Feminist Theory, 8(2), 149–168. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700107078139 Hemmings, C. (2012). Affective solidarity: Feminist reflexivity and political transformation. Feminist Theory, 13(2), 147–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700112442643 Lugones, M. (2005). From within Germinative Stasis: Creating Active Subjectivity, Resistant Agency. In A. Keating (Hrsg.), Entre mundos/among worlds: New perspectives on Gloria E. Anzaldúa (1st ed, S. 85–99). Palgrave Macmillan. Nkomo, S. M. (2021). Reflections on the continuing denial of the centrality of “race” in management and organ-ization studies. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 40(2), 212–224. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-01-2021-0011Type: conference lecture
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PublicationType: conference lecture