Queering Accounting Spaces: Lived, Embodied, and Violent Experiences of a Gay and Black Accounting Brazilian Lecturer

ABSTRACT The objective of this paper is to critically reflect upon queer experiences in the academic workplace, answering how the intersectionality of a gay and Black accounting lecturer encounters the presence of his body in a capitalist workplace. Drawing on collective biography methodology, we undertook a two‐and‐a‐half‐year engagement, working by critically and collectively (de)constructing a narrative of how an accounting lecturer has borne his gay and Black body into a violent academic workplace. The collective biography recites memory fragments from Miguel, focusing on the paradox of queer bodies (in)visibility and described how a capitalist workplace embedded in a heteronormative framework crafted Miguel's identity, oriented his body, and by making queer bodies vulnerable shaped Miguel's violent experience, which escalated from ethical forms of violence to symbolic and fear of experiencing physical violence, both from his academic peers and students of the university. Drawing on queer theory(ies), Judith Butler's and Lélia Gonzalez's works, this paper contributes to making a unique contribution to the literature on workplace, race, and sexuality from the subaltern and underrepresented Brazilian perspective. It also contributes to the diversity accounting literature, adding to the limited body of empirical work on diverse sexualities and their experiences in accounting academia. In doing so, we question the status quo, and the norms of accounting academia from Miguel's experiences, aiming to bring more diverse lived experience to be reflected upon, advancing the queer political project.