ABSTRACT
This chapter contrasts corporeal ethics with the way that ethics is explicitly incorporated into organizational discourse and practice. This enables the further development of our understanding of corporeal ethics by examining how it relates to conventional ways that organizations incorporate and justify the idea of the ethics in their actions. To do this, the chapter considers the gendered character of corporeal ethics. It is argued that the distinction between a corporeal and rational ethics is one that is primarily gendered; it is based on the long-standing association of the rational with the masculine and the affective with the feminine. The chapter explores how organizations can use such a masculine-rational conception of ethics as a subterfuge for the pursuit of commercial self-interest. The chapter shows how in their nominally ethical practice, organizations can enact an unacknowledged patriarchy that associates ethics with traditionally masculine values of domination, greatness, and sovereignty. By contrast, corporeal ethics is further developed as a form of affective generosity that displaces patriarchal privilege in favour of the ongoing pursuit of care and nurturing of others and the elimination of human relations of domination.
