Life between interlocking oppressions: An intersectional approach to organizational autoethnography

In this chapter, the author suggests that organizational autoethnography offers a powerfully critical and reflexive methodology to reclaim intersectionality. She shares her own experiences utilizing this methodology in the research of organizations and their management, focusing in particular on navigating the tensions when the intersecting privileges and oppressions of researchers clash with those of the readers. Of equal importance in an intersectional approach to autoethnography is to direct the research to dismantle systems of domination such as patriarchy, white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism, heteronormativity and ableism. The risk of retaliation is not necessarily a reason to avoid doing intersectional autoethnography. Rather, such risks could sometimes draw attention to where intersectional autoethnographies are urgently needed, but the choice to do so could be seen as a declaration of war. The author concludes with a reflection of the professional and personal risks involved with speaking against systems of power and the violence they exert.