Show Them a Good Time

Abstract

Engaging with calls from organization scholars, I analyze the communicative mechanisms through which individuals, rather than organizations, become the focus in discussions of violence. Reading a legal decision regarding rape at the University of Colorado, I argue that organizational conceptualizations of sexual violence are marginalized as (a) noncommunicative, container models of organization are prioritized and (b) violence is understood as an action rather than one element in a system of meaning. On the basis of this analysis, I offer a feminist rereading of the case that identifies the organization as a participant in sexual violence. To recognize not only individual, but also organizational sexual violence, I suggest that scholars problematize the racialized gendering of organization. Further, I show that a communicative approach that articulates complex relationships between meaning and action is central for highlighting the intersectionality of sexual violence and for unmooring sexually violent agency from individuated physicality.