This piece of writing is a joint initiative by the participants in the Gender, Work and Organization writing workshop organized in Helsinki, Finland, in June 2019. This is a particular form of writing differently. We engage in collective writing and embody what it means to write resistance to established academic practices and conventions together. This is a form of emancipatory initiative where we care for each other as writers and as human beings. There are many author voices and we aim to keep the text open and dialogical. As such, this piece of writing is about suppressed thoughts and feelings that our collective picket line allows us to express. In order to maintain the open-ended nature of the text, and perhaps also to retain some ‘dirtiness’ that is essential to writing, the article has not been language checked throughout by a native speaker of English.

This piece of writing is a joint initiative by the participants in the Gender, Work and Organization writing workshop organized in Helsinki, Finland, in June 2019. This is a particular form of writing differently. We engage in collective writing and embody what it means to write resistance to established academic practices and conventions together. This is a form of emancipatory initiative where we care for each other as writers and as human beings. There are many author voices and we aim to keep the text open and dialogical. As such, this piece of writing is about suppressed thoughts and feelings that our collective picket line allows us to express. In order to maintain the open-ended nature of the text, and perhaps also to retain some ‘dirtiness’ that is essential to writing, the article has not been language checked throughout by a native speaker of English.

This paper explores tensions related to using representation to signal diversity and inclusion on and behind the stage in a performing arts organization in Sweden. Drawing on a recognition-based approach to inclusion, we analyze how minority and majority organisational members negotiate tensions related to representing, and being made to represent, diversity. Our ethnographic study illustrates how increased representation gives rise to conflicting experiences when collective or individual heterogeneity is negated and directs attention to the interpersonal and organisational relations that condition these experiences. We contribute to the critical literature on diversity and inclusion, and to research on recognition-based inclusion, by elucidating the interplay between recognition and misrecognition that shapes how representation is negotiated. We critically examine the complexities of using representation to promote diversity and inclusion and discuss its implications for creating more equal conditions of participation in culture and arts.