Accounting in other wor(l)ds: A feminism without reserve

Abstract

Feminist theory offers a rich array of discourses of value in reflection upon the shape and character of accounting theory and accounting practices. This essay has the dual purpose of broadening the available field of feminist discourse for accounting and demonstrating the relevance of one particular feminist theorist (Luce Irigaray) to accounting. In particular, we appropriate Irigaray's feminist deconstruction of Freudian and Lacanian notions of sexual difference in order to similarly deconstruct some dominant notions of accounting's relation to value, to subjectivity, to intersubjectivity and to sexuality. What emerges is a disfiguration of accounting as an embodied practice and an appeal for quite speculative refigurations consistent with Irigaray's notion of the feminine imaginary, a pre-discursive space of possible difference. Such accounting imaginaries raise new questions about accounting's relation to value, to subjectivity, to intersubjectivity and to sexuality.