Intersectionality is a term that arose within the black feminist intellectual tradition for the purposes of identifying interlocking systems of oppression. As a descriptive term, it refers to the ways human identity is shaped by multiple social vectors and overlapping identity categories (such as sex, race, class) that may not be readily visible in single-axis formulations of identity, but which are taken to be integral to robustly capture the multifaceted nature of human experience. As a diagnostic term, it captures (...) the confluence of power and domination on the social construction of identity in order to remedy concrete harms that result from this convergence. It is not a prescriptive methodology or closed system of analysis, but rather an open-ended hermeneutic lens through which interconnected systems of oppression can come into focus in the fight for social justice. (shrink)

Appeals to intersectionality serve to remind us that social categories like race and gender cannot be adequately understood independently from each other. But what, exactly, is the intersectional thesis a thesis about? Answers to this question are remarkably diverse. Intersectionality is variously understood as a claim about the nature of social kinds, oppression, or experience ; about the limits of antidiscrimination law or identity politics ; or about the importance of fuzzy sets, multifactor analysis, or causal modeling in (...) social science. (shrink)

This book intervenes in the field of intersectionality studies: the integrative examination of the effects of racial, gendered, and class power on people’s lives. While “intersectionality” circulates as a buzzword, Anna Carastathis joins other critical voices to urge a more careful reading. Challenging the narratives of arrival that surround it, Carastathis argues that intersectionality is a horizon, illuminating ways of thinking that have yet to be realized; consequently, calls to “go beyond” intersectionality are premature. A provisional (...) interpretation of intersectionality can disorient habits of essentialism, categorial purity, and prototypicality and overcome dynamics of segregation and subordination in political movements. Through a close reading of critical race theorist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s germinal texts, published more than twenty-five years ago, Carastathis urges analytic clarity, contextual rigor, and a politicized, historicized understanding of this widely traveling concept. Intersectionality’s roots in social justice movements and critical intellectual projects—specifically Black feminism—must be retraced and synthesized with a decolonial analysis so its radical potential to actualize coalitions can be enacted. (shrink)

Intersectionality implies a series of tools to enhance the identification of and interventions against specific forms of discrimination. The article discusses the results of an exploratory study that investigated the extent to which these tools are considered and used by social workers involved in the anti-discrimination sector in some northern areas of Italy. While it is true that intersectionality seems to be a construct still relatively unknown to the professionals surveyed, they recognize how it can represent an added (...) value to their capacity for analysis and intervention. For its full utilization, they highlight the need to overcome the self-referential and fragmented manner in which social services operate in Italy and to rethink the relationship between operators and victims of discrimination, emphasizing the active role of the latter in promoting social inclusion. (shrink)

Intersectionality has become a significant intellectual approach for those thinking about the ways that race, gender, and other social identities converge in order to create unique forms of oppression. Although the initial work on intersectionality addressed the unique position of black women relative to both black men and white women, the concept has since been expanded to address a range of social identities. Here we consider how to apply some of the theoretical tools provided by intersectionality to (...) the clinical context. We begin with a brief discussion of intersectionality and how it might be useful in a clinical context. We then discuss two clinical scenarios that highlight how we think considering intersectionality could lead to more successful patient–clinician interactions. Finally, we extrapolate general strategies for applying intersectionality to the clinical context before considering objections and replies. (shrink)

This article reviews the debate on ‘intersectionality’ as the dominant approach in gender studies, with an emphasis on the politics of representation. The debate on intersectionality officially began in the late 1980s, though the approach can be traced back to the institutionalization of women's studies in the 1970s and the feminist movement of the 1960s. Black and lesbian feminists have long advocated hyphenated identities to be the backbone of feminist thought. But in recent years, intersectionality has sustained (...) criticism from numerous angles within gender studies, ranging from feminist philosophy to applied political research. This article will use the theorization of ‘interference’ as a searchlight to produce an overview of this interdisciplinary debate, culminating in our affirmative answer to the question: should we move from intersectionality to interference? Our answer is based on onto-epistemological reflections, i.e., reflections in which being and knowing are always already entangled. -/- . (shrink)

This article claims that, despite their critical-political stances, three current and influential theoretical frameworks – intersectionality, decoloniality, and ‘Indigenous localism’ – unconsciously accept global capitalism. The article focuses on the work of Crenshaw, Mignolo, Coulthard, and Tuck and Yang, respectively, to argue that, by ascribing to identity politics (intersectionality), a pluriversal politics of authenticity (decoloniality), and a decentralized ‘incommensurability’ (Indigenous localism), each engages in the culturalization and/or localization of politics – one that disavows the dimension of political economy, (...) and because of that, one that conforms well with, and poses no threat to, capitalist liberal globalization. The article concludes by reflecting on what such disavowal says about our late capitalist times, as well as the potentialities and perils of a contemporary subaltern anti-capitalist politics. (shrink)

Challenging the triumphal narrative of ‘political completion’ that surrounds intersectionality--as ‘the’ way to theorize the relationship among systems of oppression--and which helps to cement the impression of mainstream feminism’s arrival at a postracial moment, I argue we should instead approach intersectionality as a ‘provisional concept’ which disorients entrenched essentialist cognitive habits. Rather than assume that ‘intersectionality’ has a stable, positive definition, I suggest intersectionality anticipates rather than delivers the normative or theoretical goals often imputed to it.

This paper develops and articulates a metaphysics of intersectionality, the idea that multiple axes of social oppression cross-cut each other. Though intersectionality is often described through metaphor, theories of intersectionality can be formulated using the tools of contemporary analytic metaphysics. A central tenet of intersectionality theory, that intersectional identities are inseparable, can be framed in terms of explanatory unity. Further, intersectionality is best understood as metaphysical and explanatory priority of the intersectional category over its constituents, (...) akin to metaphysical priority of the whole over its parts. (shrink)

This discussion of Sally Haslanger’s recent book, Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique (Oxford 2012), investigates how her theory of race and gender handles the problem of intersectionality; that is, the problem of how to understand the ways in which one’s location in multiple socially constructed categories affects one’s lived experiences, social roles, and relative privilege or disadvantage. Haslanger defines race and gender as locations within hierarchical social structures. This high-level structural analysis allows her to find commonality without (...) claiming that, for example, all women share social roles or psychological characteristics. However, race-based oppression seems sometimes to cancel out gender-based privilege; thus raising the question of how, on Haslanger’s model, we are to understand race and gender working together. (shrink)

In feminist theory, intersectionality has become the predominant way of conceptualizing the relation between systems of oppression which construct our multiple identities and our social locations in hierarchies of power and privilege. The aim of this essay is to clarify the origins of intersectionality as a metaphor, and its theorization as a provisional concept in Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s work, followed by its uptake and mainstreaming as a paradigm by feminist theorists in a period marked by its widespread and (...) rather unquestioned--if, at times, superficial and inattentive--usage. I adduce four analytic benefits of intersectionality as a research paradigm: simultaneity, complexity, irreducibility and inclusivity. Then, I gesture at, and respond to some critiques of intersectionality advanced in the last few years, during which the concept has increasingly come under scrutiny. (shrink)

Since its inception, the concept of `intersectionality' — the interaction of multiple identities and experiences of exclusion and subordination — has been heralded as one of the most important contributions to feminist scholarship. Despite its popularity, there has been considerable confusion concerning what the concept actually means and how it can or should be applied in feminist inquiry. In this article, I look at the phenomenon of intersectionality's spectacular success within contemporary feminist scholarship, as well as the uncertainties (...) and confusion which it has generated. Drawing upon insights from the sociology of science, I shall show how and why intersectionality could become a feminist success story. I shall argue that, paradoxically, it is precisely the concept's alleged weaknesses — its ambiguity and open-endedness — that were the secrets to its success and, more generally, make it a good feminist theory. (shrink)

The identity group, women of color, remains one of the most elusive and difficult to understand both because of its specificity and its breadth. There is an ethical and political urgency to center the experiences of women of color because the absence of such focus results in unpredictable manipulations and strategies that enforce one identifying feature while oppressing the other identifying feature. Intersectionality is one of the initial concepts to articulate the experiences of women of color, but the concept (...) has been much criticized recently. I aim toward salvaging the notion. To better conceptualize the intersectional identities of women of color, I propose understanding experience through a phenomenological structure. It is the experiences of women of color that illuminate such complex, strategic and intersectional relations between different identity features, hence experience needs better understanding. The more recent translation of intersectionality anchors it with standpoint theory as a means for coalition building. I utilize Patricia Hill Collins and Anna Carastathis’s concept of the possibility of “heterogeneous commonality,” which acknowledges both internal heterogeneity and external commonality among women of color. To better understand the possibility of heterogenous commonality and avoid foundational references to experience, this paper presents the phenomenological understanding of the structure of experience as constituted by three distances: 1. between the subject and the world in time; 2. between undergoing and reflecting upon the experience; and 3. between the experience and the language with which to understand and to convey the experience. This understanding of the ontological structure of experience helpfully illustrates how women of color, through their complex and I characterize as “dense” experiences, but without foundational references to their experiences, are well situated to utilize their heterogenous commonality for coalition building. (shrink)

Intersectionality is the notion that concerns the complexity of the experiences of individuals in virtue of their belonging to multiple socially significant categories. One of its main insights is that the way society is structured around categories such as gender, race, sexuality, class, etc., produces distinctive and specific forms of discrimination and privilege for groups in the intersections. In this paper, we suggest conceiving intersectionality as a general metaphysical framework wherein specific claims to the effect that the experiences (...) of discrimination of Black women, among others, can be fruitfully formulated and examined. The main claim is that intersectional experiences emerge from the conjunction of social categories when social structures make them relevant vis-à-vis discrimination and privilege. We then argue that our view has three main virtues: metaphysical neutrality, explanatory flexibility and methodological openness. Explaining these virtues will allow us to contrast our proposal with alternatives from the recent literature. (shrink)

Naomi Zack's Inclusive Feminism: A Third Wave Theory of Women's Commonality (2005) begins with an original reading of the paradigm shift that ended U.S. second wave feminism. According to Zack there has been a crisis in academic and professional feminism since the late 1970s. It grew out of the anxieties about essentialism in the wake of white feminist's realization that our understandings of "sisterhood" and "women" excluded women of color and poor women. This realization eventually lead to the movement's foundational (...) collapse in the early 1980s. Regrettably, for Zack, feminists did not rally to reconstruct the foundations of the movement on more solid inclusive grounds. Instead we abandoned the idea that all women share something in common and for the next three decades allowed questions of difference to frame feminist politics. Zack is deeply troubled by this shift. Feminism's flight from essentialism occurred before the movement had a clear account of how universal advocacy for women's interests might be maintained. Her project in Inclusive Feminism is to explain the motivation behind the shift from commonality to intersectionality, to outline its harmful effects, and to reclaim the idea that all women share something in common (2005, 2). To accomplish this Zack careful retools essentialism in ways that simultaneously acknowledge women's differences and dodge what she perceives to be intersectionality's fragmenting effects. I want to address two facets of Zack's project: her critique of intersectionality and her effort to ground a feminist empathy-based solidarity in women's commonalities. Since Zack does not offer her readers an extensive account of what it means to think and work intersectionality, I begin by outlining the basic premises of the foundational literature. Next, I explore her reasons for rejecting this popular approach by replying to her two strongest claims against intersectionality: (1) that intersectionality complicates the category woman by multiplying genders beyond necessity, and (2) that intersectionality has a segregating effect on feminist political movements. I explain how Zack's thinks her relational essentialism [the FMP category] can effectively resolve intersectionality's fragmenting effects by providing a common foundation for an empathy-based feminist solidarity. I argue that inclusive feminism generates an oversimplified account of empathy and thus fails to engage the tensions among feminist movements that intersectionality makes visible. I conclude that her view requires a more robust epistemology of empathy if political solidarity is to be grounded in the FMP category. (shrink)

Feminist philosophers have long worried that intersectionality undermines the viability of the concept and category of woman, thereby undermining feminist theory and politics. Some have responded to this problem by abandoning intersectionality; others have attempted to find some suitably inclusive way of reconceptualizing woman. I provide a novel solution that focuses on conceptualizing oppression in light of intersectionality, rather than trying to provide an account of what it is to be a woman. By enabling us to understand (...) feminism as responding to gender oppression, this account shows that intersectionality does not conceptually undermine and fragment feminism. Feminism should be intersectional. (shrink)

Race/Class/Gender otherwise known as Intersectionality is one of the most important theoretical precepts developed in the past two decades in women's and gender studies and in the social sciences and humanities. Yet the concept remains elusive and poorly understood. This book seeks to solve these problems by answering the basic questions surrounding intersectionality in prose undergraduate students can understand and appreciate.

Intersectionality and Relational Psychoanalysis: New Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Sexuality examines the links between race, gender, and sexuality through the dual perspectives of relational psychoanalysis and the theory of intersectionality. Combining intersectional theory with relational psychoanalytic thought, the authors introduce a number of thought-provoking clinical vignettes to suggest how adopting an intersectional approach can help us navigate the space between pathology and difference in psychotherapy.

Bioethics increasingly recognizes the impact of discriminatory practices based on social categories such as race, gender, sexual orientation or ability on clinical practice. Accordingly, major bioethics associations have stressed that identifying and countering structural discrimination in clinical ethics consultations is a professional obligation of clinical ethics consultants. Yet, it is still unclear how clinical ethics consultants can fulfill this obligation. More specifically, clinical ethics needs both theoretical tools to analyze and practical strategies to address structural discrimination within clinical ethics consultations. (...) Intersectionality, a concept developed in Black feminist scholarship, is increasingly considered in bioethical theory. It stresses how social structures and practices determine social positions of privilege and disadvantage in multiple, mutually co-constitutive systems of oppression. This article aims to investigate how intersectionality can contribute to addressing structural discrimination in clinical ethics consultations with a particular focus on mental healthcare. To this end, we critically review existing approaches for clinical ethics consultants to address structural racism in clinical ethics consultations and extend them by intersectional considerations. We argue that intersectionality is a suitable tool to address structural discrimination within clinical ethics consultations and show that it can be practically implemented in two complementary ways: 1) as an analytic approach and 2) as a critical practice. (shrink)

In this article we ask what it means for sociologists to practice intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. What are the implications for choices of subject matter and style of work? We distinguish three styles of understanding intersectionality in practice: group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered. The first, emphasizes placing multiply-marginalized groups and their perspectives at the center of the research. The second, intersectionality as a process, highlights power as relational, seeing the interactions among variables as (...) multiplying oppressions at various points of intersection, and drawing attention to unmarked groups. Finally, seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions, instead looking for processes that are fully interactive, historically co-determining, and complex. Using several examples of recent, highly regarded qualitative studies, we draw attention to the comparative, contextual, and complex dimensions of sociological analysis that can be missing even when race, class, and gender are explicitly brought together. (shrink)

Although intersectional analyses of gender have been widely adopted by feminist theorists in many disciplines, controversy remains over their character, limitations, and implications. I support intersectionality, cautioning against asking too much of it. It provides standards for the uses of methods or frameworks rather than theories of power, oppression, agency, or identity. I want feminist philosophers to incorporate intersectional analyses more fully into our work so that our theories can, in fact, have the pluralistic and inclusive character to which (...) we give lip service. To this end, I advocate an intersectional family resemblance strategy that does not create philosophical problems for feminists. I test my approach against María Lugones's argument in “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System” (Lugones 2007) to determine, in particular, whether we can successfully resist a move to create multiple genders for women. If we can successfully resist this move, then we can answer the objection that intersectionality fragments women both theoretically and politically. I also argue that my approach avoids Lugones's critique of forms of intersectionality that fall within “the logic of purity.”. (shrink)

In this paper I explore some possible reasons why white feminists philosophers have failed to engage the radical work being done by non-Western women, U.S. women of color and scholars of color outside of the discipline. Feminism and academic philosophy have had lots to say to one another. Yet part of what marks feminist philosophy as philosophy is our engagement with the intellectual traditions of the white forefathers. I’m not uncomfortable with these projects: Aristotle, Foucault, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Quine, Austin, and (...) countless others have provided us with some very powerful conceptual tools.. However, as Sandra Harding observes, conventional standards for what counts as “good science” (or in this case “good philosophy”) always bear the imprint of their creators. So, I think about whether the tools my discipline hands me ever serve as strategies for exclusion. My conversation begins with intersectionality, which for feminists working outside of philosophy, is a predictable point of departure; but as a white feminist philosopher I have specific reasons for starting here. The fact that intersectionality is, at once, such a widely recognized strategy for making visible women of color’s issues and concerns in academic and policy discussions, and so neglected by philosophers is telling. I want to invite philosophers to think more seriously about intersectionality and other pluralist approaches as strategies for calling attention to whiteness of philosophy in general and feminist philosophy in particular. I want us to consider what feminist philosophy would be like if women of color’s writing, experiences, and communities drove philosophical inquiry. Since most philosophers are unfamiliar with intersectional methodologies, I begin with a basic explanation of the foundational claims of this approach. Next, I explore some reasons why white feminists working in philosophy may be resistant to this method. I identify both disciplinary and personal reasons for this hesitancy and argue that intersectionality serves as a useful strategic tool for examining white authority in the emergent feminist canon. Finally, I explore the role intersectional thinking might play in creating a feminist critical race philosophy by outlining four projects that I think will challenge and enrich feminist work in the discipline. (shrink)

The paper examines the effects of intersecting social divisions on constructions of multi‐layered citizenships and the politics of belonging in contemporary Britain. It starts with conceptual clarifications of the notions of citizenship, belonging and intersectionality and then turns to examine contemporary politics of belonging in contemporary Britain, focusing on the current debate on the ‘death of multiculturalism’ and on ‘social cohesion’. It illustrates how the use of civic and democratic values as signifiers of belonging can end up as exclusionary, (...) rather than inclusionary in that discourse. (shrink)

The concept of intersectionality is on its way to becoming a new paradigm in gender studies. In its current version, it denominates reciprocities between gender, race and class. However, it also allows for the integration of other socially defined categories, such as sexuality, nationality or age. On the other hand, it is widely left unclear as to which level these reciprocal effects apply: the level of social structures, the level of constructions of identity or the level of symbolic representations. (...) This article advocates an intersectional multi-level analysis which takes into account reciprocal effects between the various levels. This approach includes an analytical grasp of and methodical reflection on these reciprocal effects as well as making them empirically accessible. (shrink)

Intersectionality emphasizes numerous points of difference through which those who occupy multiple disadvantaged statuses are penalized. Applying this consideration to the workplace, we explore ways in which status-based and structural aspects of work undermine women and people with physical disabilities and diminish psychological well-being. We conceptually integrate research on the workplace disadvantages experienced by women and people with disabilities. Drawing on a longitudinal analysis of community survey data that includes a diverse sample of people with and without physical disabilities, (...) we explore the claim that women with disabilities are burdened by greater disadvantage in work settings compared to men with disabilities and women and men without disabilities. We find evidence that in comparison with these groups, women with disabilities on average are more psychologically affected by inequitable workplace conditions, partly because they earn less, are exposed to more workplace stress, and are less likely to experience autonomous working conditions. (shrink)

Intersectionality is a travelling theory; now enjoying significant contemporary visibility and popularity in the feminist blogosphere, it has moved across disciplines and borders in ways that are quite distinct from the scholarly critique developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw some time ago. In this article, I consider how intersectionality is translated, and retheorised, as an intertwined set of everyday knowledges and associated governmental practices that both echo and diverge from some of the complexities and politics of its wide-ranging scholarly uptake. (...) Drawing on interviews with self-identifying feminists in a pilot project mapping contemporary Australian digital feminisms, this article explores two overarching patterns in intersectionality’s mobilisation. First, the shift to understanding intersectionality as an everyday conceptual grid plotting women’s differences along one axis, and measuring relative privilege and disadvantage on the other, recentring whiteness and liberal multicultural models of diversity and inclusion. Second, the transformation of intersectionality into an abstract, individualistic model of conduct, involving the citation and classification of ‘white feminist’ behaviour elsewhere, in frequent judgments on US celebrity culture. As such, intersectionality, while seemingly popular, often remained curiously ‘theoretical’ and divorced from embodied, everyday practices. I suggest in what follows that such a model of intersectionality raises questions of the commercial, racialised, political and mediated conditions that shape the theory’s visibility and materialisation. (shrink)

The term intersectionality, which is generally attributed to Kimberlé Crenshaw, began as a metaphorical and conceptual tool used to highlight the inability of a single-axis framework to capture the lived experiences of black women. Whilst many disciplines have used the ‘tools’ of intersectionality before 1989, modern day usage of the term is usually associated with Crenshaw’s specific approach. The development of Crenshaw’s intersectionality, originated from the failure of both feminist and anti-racist discourse; to represent and capture the (...) specificity of the discrimination faced by black women. This failure resulted from an inability to identify the multiple grounds which constitute an... (shrink)

Intersectionality has been adopted as the preferred term to refer to and to analyze multiple axes of oppression in feminist theory. However, less research examines if this term, and the political analyses it carries, has been adopted by women’s rights organizations in various contexts and to what effect. Drawing on interviews with activists working in a variety of women’s rights organizations in France and Canada, I show that intersectionality is only one of the repertoires that a women’s rights (...) organization might use to analyze the social experience and the political interests of women situated at the intersection of several axes of domination. I propose a typology of four repertoires that activists use to reflect on intersectionality and inclusiveness. Drawing on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the interview data, I show that hegemonic repertoires about racial or religious identity in one national context shape the way activists and organizations understand intersectionality and its challenges. The identity of organizations, as well as their main function, also shape their understanding of intersectional issues. (shrink)

‘Intersectionality’ has now become a major feature of feminist scholarly work, despite continued debates surrounding its precise definition. Since the term was coined and the field established in the late 1980s, countless articles, volumes and conferences have grown out of it, heralding a new phase in feminist and gender studies. Over the past few years, however, the growing number of critiques leveled against intersectionality warrants us as feminists to pause and reflect on the trajectory the concept has taken (...) and on the ways in which it has traveled through time and space. Conceptualizing intersectionality as a traveling theory allows for these multiple critiques to be contextualized and addressed. It is argued that the context of the neoliberal academy plays a major role in the ways in which intersectionality has lost much of its critical potential in some of its usages today. It is further suggested that Marxist feminism offers an important means of grounding intersectionality critically and expanding intersectionality’s ability to engage with feminism transnationally. (shrink)

Seeking to capture the multi-layered, contradictory, nature of subjectivities and social positions through a framework which insists upon the complex, dynamic nature of the social, intersectionality feminism has inspired Marxist-Feminists to push the social-reproduction feminism paradigm beyond a narrow preoccupation with gender/class relations. Yet even its most politically radical articulations stop short of fully theorising the integrative logic they espouse. This article explores the roots of this under-theorisation, and suggests that a more fully integrative ontology informs certain formulations of (...) social-reproduction feminism. In understanding the social as constituted by practical human activity whose object (the social and natural world) is organised capitalistically, social-reproduction feminism highlights thedialecticalrelationship between the capitalist whole and its differentiated parts. The challenge for Marxist-Feminism is to embrace this dialectical approach while building on the insights of intersectionality feminism to more convincingly capture the unity of a complex, diverse social whole. (shrink)

Research has increasingly drawn attention to the role of online conservative news media in propagating disinformation and reinforcing social inequalities. Scholarship, however, has yet to explore how these media represent intersectionality. Using a grounded theory approach, I examined how 427 online conservative news reports, from nine widely searched websites in the U.S., portrayed intersectionality. The authors of the reports employed a complex set of discourses to condemn intersectionality, constructing it as limited, hierarchical, and divisive, while also conveying (...) panic over its ability to bring individuals on the Left into coalitions. I thus develop the concept intersectional panic to account for how these media responded to intersectionality with a considerable amount of fear or anxiety. Findings reveal that intersectional panic overlaps with, yet also operates differently from, other forms of panic, such as racist, sexist, or anti-LGBTQ fears, because the former involves anxiety over multiply-marginalized individuals advancing in U.S. society. I further reveal that these conservative news media sometimes used intersectional discourses to condemn intersectionality. Building on Patricia Hill Collins’s (2019) understanding of intersectionality as a critical tool for social justice, I argue that emphasizing intersectionality’s expansive and beneficial capacities would help challenge such panic. (shrink)

For the past thirty years, Critical Discourse Studies has been consolidating as a form of linguistically-oriented, critical social research which is characterized by a deep interest in actual social issues and forms of inequality, such as racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and sexism, both in terms of the asymmetries between participants in discourse events and their unequal capacity to control how texts are produced, distributed and consumed. In parallel, since its coinage in Kimberlé Crenshaw's African American feminist critique of race and sex (...) discrimination, intersectionality has been increasingly taken up on a global scale by scholars and practitioners alike, becoming a major feminist way of conceptualizing the relation between several forms of discrimination and oppression, to be analysed as simultaneous and multiplicative experiences. This Special Issue aims to enquire into the potential convergence between the critical discursive and intersectional approaches as theory, method and practice for the exploration of the crossroads of inequalities and oppression. This may contribute to the development of a critical research framework that enables the acknowledgment of the profound ways in which discursively, institutionally and/or structurally constructed sociocultural categorizations interact and produce different kinds of societal inequalities and unjust social relations. These, in turn, can be analysed in terms of the mutual and intertwined processes of resistance and transformation that arise out of them. Bringing together diverse contributions with a shared critical discursive and intersectional outlook, this Special Issue hopes to offer new theoretical and methodological insights for thinking through diversity in the light of present and future dynamics of inclusion, exclusion, and inequality. The six contributions operationalize the intersectional approach as theory, method and/or practice and incorporate it with a CDS perspective, providing a flavour of what a critical and intersectional discursive engagement with different and dynamic identity and power configurations on a global scale can achieve. (shrink)

This chapter develops a Marxist-intersectional framework to offer a more nuanced understanding of radicalisation, arguing that class, race, and religion are not separate but co-constitutive systems of oppression. It seeks to reconcile Marxist class analysis with intersectionality, positing that capitalism has always been racial and gendered, relying on the superexploitation of specific groups to reproduce itself. The analysis explores how capitalist labor hierarchies are fundamentally shaped by racial and religious identities, creating a “racialized proletariat” concentrated in the marginalized suburbs (...) of Europe. This framework is then used to critique liberal identity politics, which often divorces identity from material conditions and risks obscuring the underlying economic structures of inequality. The chapter provides a detailed analysis of the political economy of Islamophobia, showing how it functions to justify the exploitation of Muslim migrant labor and reinforce social control in Western nations. Utilizing W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness,” it examines the profound alienation experienced by Muslim youth in Europe and how extremist ideologies offer a dangerously simplistic resolution to their identity crises. (shrink)

‘Intersectionality’ is one of the rare pieces of academic jargon to make it out of the university and into the mainstream. The message is clear and well-known: your feminism had better be intersectional. But what exactly does this mean? This paper is partly an exercise in conceptual clarification, distinguishing at least six distinct types of claim found across the literature on intersectionality, and digging further into the most philosophically complex of these claims—namely the metaphysical and explanatory. It’s also (...) partly a reply to Sara Bernstein, who argued recently that the best interpretation of the metaphysical claim is explanatory priority. We’ll argue that duly clarified, it’s far from obvious that feminism had better be intersectional. At the very least, it had better not be only intersectional. (shrink)

Intersectionality in healthcare ethics has gained some necessary traction in the last five years. Yet, there is still work ahead. In this article, I review some of the recent work on intersectionality in healthcare ethics and argue that any successful account of intersectionality in the field ought to consider three essential amendments: 1) it must hold a relational account of autonomy, 2) center loving narrativity, and 3) demonstrate a commitment to social justice. I argue how these amendments (...) can be pursued and integrated through well-established feminist accounts, like care ethics and narrative ethics. Thus, concluding that feminist accounts of bioethics have laid a stronger foundation than competing accounts for the integration of intersectionality’s core principles into healthcare ethics. (shrink)

Kimberlé Crenshaw arrived at her famous phrase “intersectionality” by carefully thinking through speeches and writings given to us by early Black feminists, such as like Sojourner Truth and Anna J. Cooper. In this paper, I expand on this groundbreaking work in two somewhat surprising ways. First, I bring the ideas of these early Black feminists together with important, related proposals from W.E.B. Du Bois, Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and Simone de Beauvoir. Second, I relate these works to central ideas (...) in Kant’s practical philosophy in an effort to develop a Kantian theory of intersectionality. In addition to grasping the distinctive, destructive directions of oppressive forces aimed at women, the poor, and minorities, I seek to understand better the new, violently destructive elements found in European modernity, as evidenced both in European colonialization as well as the Holocaust. -/- This book is published under the OA CC-BY 4.0 license. (shrink)

Intersectionality is a critical analytical framework for social psychology. I have organised this chapter into four sections. First, I provide a historical overview of intersectionality. Second, using some of intersectionality’s core tenets as a foundation, I critique some traditional assumptions of mainstream social psychological theory and research. Third, I highlight some current trends in intersectional social psychological research. Finally, I conclude with: (a) a brief discussion about why social psychology has been so slow to embrace intersectionality; (...) (b) a summary of the advantages of a more intersectional social psychology; and (c) recommendations of some key references for further reading. (shrink)

Recent empirical work attempts to investigate how implicit biases target those facing intersectional oppression. This is welcome, since early work on implicit biases focused on single axes of discrimination, such as race, gender, or age. However, the success of such empirical work on how biases target those facing intersectional oppressions depends on adequate conceptualizations of intersectionality and empirical measures that are responsive to these conceptualizations. Surveying prominent recent empirical work, we identify failures in conceptualizations of intersectionality that inform (...) the design of empirical measures. These failures generate unsupported conclusions about the kinds of biases that those experiencing multiple oppressions face, and render proposed interventions to combat biases useless at best, harmful at worst. We also diagnose unwarranted assumptions about how stereotypes combine in complex concepts: first, that when “simple” social concepts combine the complex concepts inherit the associated stereotypes of their simpler constituent concepts; second that studies which focus on cognition about single social categories are investigating “simple” social concepts (cf. Goff and Khan 2013). We tease out recommendations to guide future investigations into biases that target those who experience multiple oppressions. (shrink)

Intersectionality broadly refers to the idea that gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, migration, disability, and other axes of oppression and social identity are not separate but intersect and operate together. Rooted in Black feminism and popularized by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw since 1989, intersectionality has become a cornerstone of feminist scholarship. Despite its wide use across disciplines, however, the term has also sparked debate, and its definition and implications remain far from agreed upon. Debates about intersectionality have (...) raised questions such as: What does it mean to say that oppressions “intersect”? Does this imply that we cannot speak of sexism apart from racism, class exploitation, or other forms of oppression? Can we theorize “women’s” oppression when Black, Latina, Asian, and white women experience different realities? And how can we build solidarity across these intersectional differences? This annotated bibliography introduces key resources for understanding how the notion of intersectionality originated, evolved, and continues to be debated. General Overviews lists resources that provide a general understanding of intersectionality for students, educators, and researchers. Early Roots includes both recent works tracing intersectionality to earlier Black feminist thought and those foundational texts themselves. Critical Engagements surveys major critiques and responses to intersectionality, and Conceptualization and Application features works that refine or employ the concept in theory and practice. As many scholars note, intersectionality is a work in progress—an evolving framework continually reshaped as feminists practice intersectionality in their scholarship and activism. This article is likewise a living document, expanding alongside ongoing feminist and anti-oppression projects. (shrink)

Intersectionality of Critical Animal Studies: A Historical Collection represents the very best that the Journal for Critical Animal Studies (JCAS) has published in terms of articles that are written by activists and for activists.

In this paper, I bring attention to how intersectionality affects reclamation—something that is hardly explored in the social philosophy of language. The reclamation of slurs is the linguistic practice whereby speakers— typically members of the target group—employ these (otherwise derogatory) terms to express pride, foster camaraderie, manifest solidarity, fight discrimination, etc. Whether and how reclamation achieves such results is an open question, vividly discussed within academia and in the public debate. Intersectionality is the theory according to which various (...) axes of oppression (e.g., ethnicity, class, gender, etc.) interact in a way that creates distinctive kinds of discrimination—so, for instance, white and Black women experience sexism in deeply different ways. Taking intersectionality into account when assessing reclamation means, among other things, that we cannot investigate whether and how reclamation is beneficial or detrimental without relativizing the inquiry to intersectionally different segments of the targeted group. In this work, I consider the reclamation of “slut” within SlutWalks and the intersectional concerns that it raised—roughly, the worry that the reclamation of “slut” excludes Black women and thus betrays feminism’s globalist values. I distinguish the empirical and normative questions that arise from the intersectional worry and argue that it is hardly possible to assess the latter, if the former are not settled first. I thus turn to the existing experimental studies and illustrate the ways in which they have failed to take intersectionality into account. I conclude that future experiments should adopt a more critical stance in assessing whether their research questions require an intersectional stance and interpret their findings accordingly. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the contributions that standpoint theory and intersectionality make as philosophical methods in bioethics. It opens by articulating foundational claims of standpoint theory and by examining how developing a critical consciousness of power relationships can transform perspectival knowledge into an epistemologically privileged standpoint that challenges the uncritical partiality of dominant perspectives. Next, the analysis of power relationships provided by feminist ethics is used to demonstrate how recognition of differing epistemological perspectives is transformed into feminist standpoint theory. It (...) then examines how the method of intersectionality emerges, in part, from criticisms of feminism’s own shortsightedness and exclusionary practices. Then, a review of the methods of critical race theory describes its origins, basic tenets, and contribution in developing a critical consciousness relevant to bioethics. Finally, the chapter presents key insights from the field of disability studies, demonstrating how lived experiences of disability may provide a standpoint to inform medical and bioethical analysis, particularly in discussions of quality of life. Though perspectives informed by other features of social context are important for bioethical analysis—for example, social class, educational background, linguistic and cultural differences—this chapter focuses on gender, race, and disability to illuminate features of standpoint theory and intersectionality. (shrink)

The principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice are well established ethical principles in health research. Of these principles, justice has received less attention by health researchers. The purpose of this article is to broaden the discussion of health research ethics, particularly the ethical principle of justice, to include societal considerations — who and what are studied and why? — and to critique current applications of ethical principles within this broader view. We will use a feminist intersectional approach in the (...) context of health disparities research to firmly establish inseparable links between health research ethics, social action, and social justice. The aim is to provide an ethical approach to health disparities research that simultaneously describes and seeks to eliminate health disparities. (shrink)

Although the spread of intersectionality is inherently positive, several thinkers have highlighted problems associated with its popularity, which can lead to forms of co-optation and/or appropriation by white feminisms, both within and outside academia. These critiques have resonated among certain Western feminists who face a complex situation. On the one hand, intersectionality has broadened the analytical horizons of feminism, revealing the limitations of the ‘starting-from-self’ approach in favour of a more systemic analysis of oppression. On the other hand, (...) Black and decolonial thinkers have exposed the ventriloquist dynamics often at work in Western feminism. This article examines this tension, seeking to address questions such as: How can a balance be struck between violent universalism and the personalism of struggles? What research methodologies could enable the recognition of sociocultural differences while fostering the creation of a common ground for defining a collective political subject? Drawing on feminist and decolonial perspectives, this article addresses one of the central aporias of contemporary feminism, aiming to contribute to feminist theory and practice by offering conceptual and methodological tools that deepen the understanding of power relations within feminisms themselves. In order to do that, the article begins by critically examining recurring concepts in mainstream feminism such as privilege and alliance, and it secondly identifies two trajectories that may support the development of a more grounded intersectional research model: decolonising the concept of alliance and glitching academia through feminist solidarity. (shrink)

Whereas intersectionality presents a fruitful framework for theoretical and empirical research, some of its fundamental features present great confusion. The term ‘intersectionality’ and its metaphor of the crossroads seem to reproduce what it aims to avoid: conceiving categories as separate. Despite the attempts for developing new metaphors that illustrate the mutual constitution relation among categories, gender, race or class keep being imagined as discrete units that intersect, mix or combine. Here we identify two main problems in metaphors: the (...) lack of differentiation between positions and effects and the problem of reification. We then present a new metaphor that overcomes these two problems: a basket of apples. We argue that considering social positions as the diverse properties of different apples avoids reification by considering categories as properties and not as objects themselves, and at the same time it allows us to think about the effects dimension from a plural and contextual approach. With this shift, we propose a reframing of the discussion in debates on intersectionality theory on the relation among categories, their in/separability and fragmentation. (shrink)

Background Intersectionality is a concept that originated in Black feminist movements in the US-American context of the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in the work of feminist scholar and lawyer Kimberlé W. Crenshaw. Intersectional approaches aim to highlight the interconnectedness of gender and sexuality with other social categories, such as race, class, age, and ability to look at how individuals are discriminated against and privileged in institutions and societal power structures. Intersectionality is a “traveling concept”, which also made its (...) way into bioethical research. Methods We conducted a systematic review to answer the question of where and how the concept of intersectionality is applied in bioethical research. The PubMed and Web of Science databases were systematically searched and 192 articles addressing bioethical topics and intersectionality were finally included. Results The qualitative analysis resulted in a category system with five main categories: (1) application purpose and function, (2) social dimensions, (3) levels, (4) health-care disciplines and academic fields, and (5) challenges, limitations, and critique. The variety of academic fields and health-care disciplines working with the concept ranges from psychology, through gynaecology to palliative care and deaf studies. Important functions that the concept of intersectionality fulfils in bioethical research are making inequities visible, creating better health data collections and embracing self-reflection. Intersectionality is also a critical praxis and fits neatly into the overarching goal of bioethics to work toward social justice in health care. Intersectionality aims at making research results relevant for respective communities and patients, and informs the development of policies. Conclusions This systematic review is, to the best of our knowledge, the first one to provide a full overview of the reference to intersectionality in bioethical scholarship. It creates a basis for future research that applies intersectionality as a theoretical and methodical tool for analysing bioethical questions. (shrink)

In this article I caution that María Lugones's critiques of Kimberlé Crenshaw's intersectional theory posit a dangerous form of epistemic erasure, which underlies Lugones's decolonial methodology. This essay serves as a critical engagement with Lugones's essay “Radical Multiculturalism and Women of Color Feminisms” in order to uncover the decolonial lens within Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality. In her assertion that intersectionality is a “white bourgeois feminism colluding with the oppression of Women of Color,” Lugones precludes any possibility of (...) class='Hi'>intersectionality operating as a decolonial method. Although Lugones states that her “decolonial feminism” is for all women of color, it ultimately excludes Black women, particularly with her misconstruing of Crenshaw's articulation of intersectionality that is rooted within the Black American feminist tradition. I explore Lugones's claims by juxtaposing her rendering of intersectionality with Crenshaw's and conclude that Lugones's decolonial theory risks erasing Black women from her framework. (shrink)

The conferralist account of social properties that Ásta develops and defends in Categories We Live By is persuasive in many ways. Conferralism could however do better, by its own lights, at handling the phenomenon of intersectionality. This paper first suggests a friendly amendment to the schema for conferrals that Asta offers. This helps to explain the difficulty concerning intersectionality. Finally, the paper suggests a way of developing the conferralist account that would resolve this difficulty.

This article examines the growing body of commemorative feminist work on intersectionality – the myriad journals and books that have marked intersectionality’s twentieth anniversary and celebrated the analytic’s field-defining status and cross-disciplinary circulation. I argue that this commemorative scholarship is marked by its own genre conventions, including the emergence of originalism, an investment in returning to the ‘inaugural’ intersectional texts – namely Crenshaw’s two articles (1989, 1991) – and assessing later feminist work on intersectionality by its fidelity (...) to those texts. The article reveals that intersectional originalism is its own practice of re-reading and re-interpretation that has its own complex temporal and racial politics, and which is animated by a desire to rescue intersectionality from critique in a moment in which identity politics are increasingly suspect. (shrink)