Strangers in Conversation: Judith Butler With Gender, Work and Organization

On June 22, 2022, Judith Butler joined the co-authors below in conversation to discuss connections between their work and the field of work and organization studies. In recent years, Butler's writing has been engaging increasingly explicitly with the organization of gender in and through work, and with the question of how our desire for recognition of ourselves as viable subjects, leading liveable, grievable, and workable lives, comes to be organized. This paper is an almost verbatim write-up of that conversation. The conversation took place as a reflection on the impact of Gender Trouble, first published in 1990, and Judith Butler's writing subsequently on the field of work and organization studies during a period when they were working on the eagerly anticipated book, Who's Afraid of Gender?