Towards a theory of decolonial performativity: breaking with organizational communication from the Global North. An interview with Consuelo Vásquez

As discussed in this special issue’s articles, performativity is a way of understanding social reality as it plays out in the interactions between the various entities that contribute to its constitution. Studying a phenomenon from a performative point of view, or studying performativity as such, requires particular methodological postures and ways of apprehending organizational processes. Despite the many efforts to provide such conceptual and analytical apparatus that performatively oriented researchers need (see our Guest Editorial), a number of blind spots continue to hinder our ability to understand how social relations are brought about in our communicative practices. Taking the stance that some of those limitations are related to the fact that performativity has mostly been theorized by Western scholars from Europe and North America, we want, as a conclusion to the special issue, to shift the perspective and explore the notion of performativity in the light of decolonial approaches. In doing so, we can understand how decoloniality, itself, is a performative gesture and offer an overview of the methodologies that can be put in place to “horizontalize” performative approaches, including organizational communication research, which, as the articles in this special issue demonstrate, has been particularly active in bringing performativity to management and organization studies. Indeed, decolonial approaches decentralize the gaze on this field of study, which continues to focus on definitions originating in the “Global North,” notably the United States, Canada and, to a lesser extent, France.To help us formulate a decolonial understanding of performativity, we turn to Consuelo Vásquez, professor of organizational communication at the Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada), whose name is closely associated with the “communicative constitution of organization” (CCO) tradition, which places performativity at the heart of its project. However, to limit her identity to these few words is reductive since, as we will see in the interview she gave us for this special issue, Consuelo questions her positionality in the liminal and relational space she occupies as a Chilean woman marked by dictatorship but also as a university professor embodying a position of colonial power and domination. Thus, Consuelo, through the research she conducts with Latinx et al. colleagues, invites us to decentralize knowledge production theoretically and methodologically, as well as individually and collectively, recognizing that alternative ways of defining organizational communication would enable us to embrace a performative definition that reflects colonial and exclusive realities. Finally, Consuelo also invites us to rethink the way in which researchers approach organizational processes by taking an interest in organizations “in the margins” and, above all, by putting power relations and the contexts in which this knowledge is produced back at the heart of the analysis.CV: I identify myself as a Latina woman, a migrant living in Canada. The question of positionality is central from a decolonial point of view, so it’s important to emphasize that even though I live in the Global North, I try to speak from the South, and more specifically from Latin America or Abya Yala, to use the Kunas’ expression to refer to the entire American territory prior to European colonization. So, I recognize that I’m in a hybrid position or a liminal space in which, because of my life trajectory, I find myself somewhat in the middle of, or at the crossroads of, a hegemonic culture – that of the Global North – and also a culture that comes from the South, which can be described as being at the margins.For me, it is essential to understand and also deconstruct this position, because, in a way, even if I want to decolonize or even if I try to decolonize the production of knowledge and, in particular, the field of organizational communication, I am at the same time reproducing a form of colonization and violence, since I was trained in the North, I live in Canada and also quite simply because of the fact that I work in an academic institution, a place of colonization, no matter where you are in the world. My trajectory reflects this “in-betweenness” to use Bhabha’s (1994) words.I was born in Chile. My parents moved to Canada when I was very young. I spent my early school years in Canada, where I learned to speak English and French in addition to Spanish. When I was about 11, my parents decided to return to Chile to take part in the pro-democracy social movements. In fact, I’m also what’s known as a “daughter of the dictatorship,” because I was born during that period and my life was impacted by it, notably by living in exile for nine years. To my mind, this also marks a kind of transformation that took place during my career, when I reconnected with my roots, with a Chilean and Latin American identity marked by dictatorships. 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