Feminist Ethics

Abstract

The chapter considers developments in feminist ethics through the prism of post-structuralism and psychoanalysis. It proposes a notion of ethics based on interconnectedness and relationality as an intersubjective phenomenon that is embedded in the social norms, discourses, and political arrangements. The aim is to advance the new organizational ethics by drawing inspiration from diverse strands of feminism as a way of counteracting exclusionary organizational practices. Specifically, the chapter develops an ethical proposition of the feminist embodied relationality by drawing on Bracha Ettinger’s productive engagement with psychoanalysis, philosophy, and art as an affirmative ethics of life. Ettinger’s work is foregrounded through engaging with Judith Butler’s thinking on precarity of human life and Jessica Benjamin’s work on “thirdness” as a space for relating emerging between the self and the other. Overall, the proposed ethical framing offers a new understanding of the work of organizations while striving to promote equality in management practice.KeywordsFeminist ethicsRelationalityAffectPsychoanalysisPrecariousnessCohabitationCompassionInterconnectedness