Breaking the plaster: Making do with the fragility of the body

Emmanouela Mandalaki

Gender, Work and Organization, 2023, vol. 30, issue 4, 1450-1467

Abstract: Drawing on a personal experience with temporary impairment following a foot bone fracture, I here reflect on forms of marginalization fragile bodies face under normative social and organizational structures. Combining reflexive narratives, poetry, art‐making, diary notes and open questions I ask myself and the reader, with feminist literature insights inspiring my thinking and writing, I seek to problematize taken for granted assumptions around usability and accessibility of objects and spaces in society and organizations. I discuss learnings I derived from this experience, developing their relevance for broader social, academic and political debates. Namely, I argue for the importance of rethinking embodied fragility as agility from which ableist environments might learn new practices. I also discuss slowness as well as engagement with embodied research methods, feminist reading and writing as redemptive getaways for making sense of embodied trauma in ways that resist social and epistemic norms that augment inequalities.

Date: 2023
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