The purpose of this paper is to explore analytical concepts developed by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950-2009) in the areas of performativity, affect and alternatives for critical enquiry in relation to contemporary organisation study. Sedgwick was a literary critic, poet, activist, and social theorist. Her perhaps most influential book, Epistemology of the Closet (1990), was in press when Judith Butler published Gender Trouble (1990). These books shifted the focus of research on sexuality from a personal quality and an object preference to performative qualities of sexuality and gender. In this paper I turn to the lingering question of why researchers in organisation theory have not engaged with Sedgwick’s work more broadly despite the growing interest towards performativity (eg. Gond et al. 2016) and affect (Fotaki et al. 2017). In this paper I aim to weave materials for this missing witness between body and language (Das 2007, 48). Organisation theory in recent years has shown a growing interest in queer subjectivities and performativities (Parker 2001, 2002, Rumens 2016, 2017, 2018, Rippin 2017), academic activism (Parker 2001, Contu 2017, Rippin 2017) and the relationship of affect in organisation (Fotaki et al. 2017). In view of this recent interest in queer performativities and in affect and organisation, Sedgwick’s conceptual innovations certainly merit further analysis.

In this paper, I will focus on Rumens’ (2017) proposal that critical organisation enquiry strike up a friendship with queer theory. In this spirit, I would like to address some themes in recent discussions on organisation and see how Sedgwick’s contribution might help ‘destabilize management’ (Parker 2001). The purpose of this destabilisation is to mobilise subject positions in regenerative ways. Instead of focusing on exposure of management, it points to voicing vulnerable subjectivities and deconstructing resources for diversity and more liveable objects. Further, it points at queering as not a matter of representation but a constant struggle to meet embedded normalising tendencies in management language. To this end, I will draw main inspiration from Sedgwick’s later works on queer performativity, which return to J.L. Austin’s (1975/1997) speech-act theory, develop the concept of the periperformative and explore alternative strategies for critical enquiry in reparative readings in Touching Feeling – Affect, Pedagogy, Performative (Sedgwick 2003).

This paper will start by witnessing Sedgwick’s queering in the relationship to the contemporary critical organisation theory and queering management. This is followed by visit to Sedgwick’s tactics to combat normalising tendencies in language use, thinking of affect as mobilising subjectivities, and finally, reparative reading as critical enquiry and a mode of academic activism.