Fire inside me – Exploring the possibilities of embodied queer listening

Abstract

In this article, I develop the methodological approach of embodied queer listening, which allows capturing, analyzing, and writing with/through/about the researcher’s embodied experience as part of the research process in interview-based studies. The approach combines anti-narrative research with embodied and queer listening to enable researchers to engage critically with normative narratives shared in interview situations and listen to their own embodied experiences that are otherwise suppressed in normative discourse. Embodied queer listening enables careful reflection of the researcher’s positionality and power relation vis-à-vis the research participants and recognizes embodied experience as a source of knowledge that can guide further conceptualization and theorization in organizational research. Homing in on Black feminist standpoint epistemologies and the importance of ‘Outsiders Within’ who create knowledge ‘from the margin’, it contributes to epistemological discussions on the relationship between knowledge production and gendered and racialized power structures in organization studies.