The wor(l)d is out -You are not alone: Toward a healing organizational autoethnography in/through feminist reading and writing

Abstract

This paper recounts herstories of domestic violence and separation, where by reading and writing of/through one another’s physical and emotional bruises, we create a healing autoethnographic space for connection. We argue that doing so allows us to acquire the feminist relational power necessary to resist when forms of patriarchal violence threaten to hit us again. Our embodied text converses with eclectic feminist works that empower us to write down our wor(l)ds, conceptualizing reading and writing as relational healing processes in this critical autoethnography. Engaging with a healing organizational autoethnography, we suggest, allows us to make sense of the violence and marginalization that masculine organizational norms enact on othered bodies; it leads to understanding knowledge creation more broadly as the relational labor of vulnerable bodies who care for each other. This autoethnographic exploration extends critical autoethnographic work and contributes to feminist debates on writing differently, underscoring the healing potential of reading in relation to writing to voice long-seated trauma in organizational research and experience. In this way, we also amplify the need to create organizational initiatives and spaces that make healing possible.