Forum Introduction: Queering the “Closet” at Work

Queer theory has an important and consequential presence in communication studies (e.g., Brouwer, Ferderer, Gamboa, Kramer, & Mistretta, 2012; Chávez, 2013; Chevrette, 2013; Moreman & McIntosh, 2010; Yep, 2003). It has prompted research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) identities across the field’s subdisciplines, challenged normativity, and pursued questions about deviance, desire, gender, and performance. Organizational communication, however, has been somewhat reticent about queerness, perhaps even a bit resistant. For example, in this journal—the flagship outlet for organizational communication scholarship—the word queer has never appeared in the title, abstract, or keywords for an article prior to the publication of this forum. Passing mentions of the word have occurred fewer than 20 times, usually in forum essays rather than featured articles and never as a central theoretical framework. As some scholars have argued, organizational research—and organizational life—is straight (Bruni, 2006; Spradlin, 1998).

Nevertheless, organizational communication scholars are beginning to queer the subfield (e.g., Compton, 2016; Compton & Dougherty, 2017; Dixon & Dougherty, 2014; Harris & Fortney, 2017; McDonald, 2015, 2017). They work in concert with critical management scholars who increasingly use queer theory to interrogate constructs such as leadership, identity, and diversity (e.g., Bendl, Fleischmann, & Walenta, 2008; Harding, Lee, Ford, & Learmonth, 2011; M. Parker, 2016; Rumens, 2016). They also build upon organizational communication’s recent difference research (Allen, 2011; Mumby, 2011; P. S. Parker, 2014) and note the close relationship between feminist and queer theories (Jagose, 2009).

Given this context, our forum invites queer theory and organizational communication into deeper conversation through a focus on the closet. Queer theorists outside communication studies have devoted sustained attention to the closet (Sedgwick, 1990; Seidman, 2002), and our colleagues in other communication subfields and closely related disciplines have carefully theorized and problematized the concept (e.g., Adams, 2011; Manning, 2015; Zimman, 2009). In the essays that follow, we extend this work into organizational communication and demonstrate that the closet is an omnipresent, constitutive feature of organizing. It shapes work experiences, especially for people with nonnormative identities, and it is intertwined with power and privilege. Although the closet has traditionally described experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, we use an intersectional lens to extend the metaphor. Thus, we focus on linkages between queerness and additional, nonnormative forms of difference that (a) people may attempt to conceal, (b) must be discursively and/or materially revealed to be formally recognized, and (c) are subject to stigma such that “coming out” or being outed can have negative consequences. Multiple closets exist in any moment, and coming out or being forced out is not always or solely empowering.

Although a summary of queer theory is outside of the purview of this forum, the essays draw on queer theory in multiple ways and follow the guiding principles McDonald (2015) put forth for queer research in organizational communication. First, the essays each focus on how normativity relates to various forms of difference, including gender, race, immigration, family structure, health, and religion. This focus is in line with queer theory’s explication of normalization processes that marginalize groups of people, including but not limited to sexual minorities. Second, the forum broadens the scope of difference research by moving beyond identity categories—such as gender—typically used to structure research in this area, a move consistent with queer theory’s anticategorical, fluid, and performative approach to difference. Third, the authors show the intrinsic intertwining of normativity and power and, following the political impetus of queer theory, challenge the manifestation of normativity in organizing and communicative practices. Last, the forum queers the very idea of the closet by moving beyond its common conceptualization in communication research as a metaphor that describes solely LGBT experiences. This expansion of the closet is accordant with queer theory’s push to continually disrupt and interrogate taken-for-granted understandings of social constructs.

The forum essays are organized as follows. First, Dixon highlights how closeted family statuses and relationship orientations impact work experiences, and she does so using queer theory to extend scholarship on discourse dependent families. The forum then turns to an essay from Eger who discusses the job-seeking experiences of transgender workers and discards problematic ideas about deception. Ferguson follows using the concept of the closet to extend work on race and organizational socialization by analyzing his experiences anticipating and beginning a career as a Black man in academia. After that, McDonald shows how multiple intersections of difference shape the closet around the immigration status of international scholars as they navigate the academic job market in the United States. Romo closes with an essay on how nondrinkers negotiate stigma and the closet at work, and she uses these examples to integrate organizational communication scholarship on stigma with communication privacy management theory. Last, Buzzanell offers a critical response and argues that the style and contents of the forum essays queer and pluralize the closet. She also discusses the forum’s implications for how organizational communication researchers think about identity and difference. Collectively, we practice and demonstrate the possibilities of intersectional, coalitional work around a common metaphor. In addition, we support ongoing efforts to cultivate a relationship between organizational communication scholarship on power and a nascent critical turn in interpersonal and family communication.

Readers may notice that the essays play with queer and feminist theories’ historical relationships to identity politics. Interpreted in one way, the forum appears to take for granted categories such as Black and immigrant, sometimes treating them as authentic identities to reveal and/or conceal. In this sense, the essays echo a mode of political agitation that Seidman (1997) noted was crucial for early efforts to secure basic gay and lesbian rights. Reading the same essays in a second way, however, queerness is decoupled from a coherent subject. For instance, the essays focus on interactions that render the closet’s contents unstable, and the authors demonstrate processes via which the walls and doors of the closet—much less the identities of workers who experience it—never settle. Both these readings—one that strategically essentializes, one that emphasizes fluidity—are consistent with the dilemmas and productive tensions characteristic of intersectional and feminist work (Harris, 2016a, 2016b).

In this spirit, the forum’s dialogue on the closet focuses on LGBTQ people to some extent, and, even more, it honors the legacy of queerness by answering calls to continue to queer it (e.g., M. Parker, 2016). As Butler (1993) said,

The term “queer” . . . will have to remain that which is, in the present, never fully owned, but always and only redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and expanding political purposes. (p. 228)

Indeed, Clair (2002) envisioned these expanding political purposes nearly two decades ago when, noting the absence of feminisms in an account of critical management theory, she quipped, “Once you add feminism, proponents of race theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory, and others will come knocking on the proverbial door” (p. 119). Nearly 20 years later, we are here, detailing the contours of the closet door. We do not knock, however, because we are quite sure that the Q in this journal’s initials–MCQ–was always an invitation to queer this space.