Trying alterity, passion and reflexivity: performing scholarly resistance to doing and writing qualitative inquiry

Purpose This essay is a performing manuscript that invites readers to consider how alterity opens organization and management theory. Readers actively experience the resistive performance through nontraditional writing, witnessing onto-epistemological, historical and academic tensions that influence scholarship. Design/methodology/approach By employing nontraditional writing, the text functions as a resistive performance in which readers act as jurors, placing alterity on trial within the metaphorical space of a US courtroom. To reach a verdict, they must navigate through strategically ambiguous metaphors, polysemous statements and a collage of artists, characters, songs and postmodern satire. Findings Readers construct ideas in tandem with the performers and author. This experiential performance invites reflexivity and passion, offering new possibilities with every reading – so long as the audience remains fluid and engaged. Originality/value The performative, nontraditional writing style exemplifies a call for texts that grant readers the autonomy to co-construct conclusions, releasing alterity, passion and reflexivity from the confines of traditional academic writing.