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Intesectionality at the cross-roads
Women's Studies International Forum 34 (2011) 263–270
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Women's Studies International Forum j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / w s i f
Review Essay
Intesectionality at the cross-roads Elżbieta H. Oleksy University of Łódź, Poland
Contents
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I am a woman, a lesbian, a poet, poor, handicapped, radical, Indian, over seventy— an eight-time loser. How shall I not be a revolutionary? How shall I not see my sister in every woman, my brother in any man, my child to cherish in every child? When they dragged Jane Kennedy into solitary that was my arm the cops were twisting. When they dropped napalm on the rice paddies that was my skin on fire, that was my blood running out hot and sticky. Goddess, give me eight kinds of strength to fight back. Valerie Taylor, “The Sweet Little Old Gray-Haired Lady in Sneakers”1 Despite a multitude of voices, over the last three decades, announcing the advent of intersectionality, its practitioners 0277-5395/$ – see front matter © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2011.02.002
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cannot come to a common understanding as to whether it is a critical concept/theory, methodology, or social practice. If it is a theory, is it “anti-categorical,” “intra-categorical,” or “intercategorical” (McCall, 2005, 1773)? Or, perhaps, “explicit,” “implicit,” or “under other names” (Lykke, 2010, 68)? Should we call it intersectionality, multiple discrimination, interferences, shared differences, intricate interdependencies, different serial belongings, interlocking oppressions, etc.? And beyond this confusion, anyone who would like to join the intersectionality crowd and express her opinion on the subject in the midst of all these queries, risks being called a “scholarly dilettante who perpetually chase[s] scholarly fads” (Collins, in Dill & Zambrana, 2009, vii). Questions then arise: is intersectionality a temporary fashion? Has it exhausted its limits? Has it found itself at the cross-roads? In an attempt at answering these questions, I will outline the history of the concept, present its main theoretical directions, and think about its future, especially in the context of what is perceived as contemporary “generational and digital divide.” Leading scholars have given intersectionality a name (Crenshaw, 1989), methodology (McCall, 2005), and situated standpoint (Collins, 2000). Books and articles burgeon as intersectionality becomes an established approach — a “feminist success story” (Davis, 67). But there are also dissenting voices (hooks, 1984, 2000; Collins, 1998a,b) and ones predicting intersectionality's demise (Conaghan, 2007). At its most basic level, the concept of intersectionality is used to cover the interconnections between various social differentials, such as gender, race, ethnic origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. Intersectionality theories came in the wake of – or on the tomb of – multiculturalism, which recognizes diversification of cultures
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and criticizes the silencing of minority voices, the neglect of minorities' contributions to world culture, and the rejection of alternate visions — a process of excluding identities other than those of the majority. Multiculturalism typically looks at groups, rather than individuals, and explores group identity, rather than subjectivity. Intersectionality goes further; it replaces the modernist emphasis on identities in common with a post-modernist, post-structural concept of subjectivity, i.e., a person's sense of self. The latter perception embraces both stability and change and signifies an endless process of becoming. With such a change of emphasis came a shift from identities in common, that is to say, from commonality and inclusion, from shared experience, to its opposite: exclusiveness and taking subject positions. In feminist theory, for example, the emphasis on the commonality of women's experience worldwide brought a questioning of the second wave of women's rights activism. For example, many black commentators (e.g. hooks, 1984, 2000) challenged those varieties of feminism which perceive the roots of women's predicament exclusively in their disproportionate access to the means of production characteristic of wealthy Western civilizations. For, disclosing the material foundations of women's social submission, as well as the relationship between the mode of production and women's status – goals advocated by Marxist feminists – fails to embrace the experience of black women, who, like women in numerous Eastern European countries, traditionally had to work outside the home (Oleksy, 2005, 2006), unlike their white, Western, middle-class counterparts. Intersectionality was to heal such ideological fissures. But did it? Before I attempt to answer this question, I will outline some basic knowledge about this laden concept. If we think of a single place where it was instituted, we can look back to the year 1978 and an initiative taken at the University of Maryland. A small research group was created there whose aim was to explore the intersections of gender, race, and ethnicity. Twenty years later a Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity (CRGE) was founded there, whose mission was to promote research and faculty and graduate student development through the exploration of the intersections of gender, ethnicity, race, and other interlocking oppressions as they shape identities and subjectivities in multifaceted social relations. The critical term itself was coined by Crenshaw (1989) who, in her essay “Demarginalizng the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics”, illustrated it with a crossroad metaphor which was helpful in an early period of intersectionality research, but disregarded later by some feminists as too static and unable to convey the idiosyncrasies of intersectionality (Lewis, 2009; Lykke, 2010). Yet the initial metaphor, and the theory accompanying it, is still influential. In a recent text, which appeared in an internet source “A Primer on Intersectionality” (2009), Crenshaw (1989) presents an example of how intersectional analysis could be applied to social phenomena. Crenshaw followed and described a court case on gender and race discriminatory practice, which took place at General Motors (GM). In this particular case, GM wanted to hire people for front office jobs and for heavy industrial work. Three categories of candidates placed their dossiers: white women, black women, and black men. White women were hired for office jobs and black men were employed to perform heavy
industrial jobs. Five black women, who had not been hired, took the case to court arguing that they had been discriminated on account of interlocked categories of gender and race. They lost the case. They faced intersectional invisibility because at that time anti-discrimination laws addressed only one type of discrimination. Since white women were hired by GM and so were black men, the company felt that it had obeyed the antidiscrimination policy. The court ruled that this particular complaint “might state a cause of action for race discrimination, sex discrimination, or alternatively either, but not a combination of both” (DeGraffenreid v. General Motors Assembly Division, 1976). Thinking about how such a “big miss” could have happened, Crenshaw (1989) concluded that in the claimants' case the court considered their discrimination axes parallel rather than intersecting. They could only “state a cause of action” for one form of discrimination, rather than more overlapping causes of discrimination. Another early court case predating contemporary attempts to change legislation began in 1985 with the Mossop v. Canada case ([1993] 1 S.C.R. 554). The plaintiff (Brian Mossop) who lived in the same sex relationship with another man, took a day off work to attend the funeral of his partner's father. The agreement between the Treasury Board and Mossop's union afforded up to four days upon the death of a member of an employee's “immediate family,” a term signifying a spouse of the opposite gender. Mossop's request was turned down. He then filed a grievance against the employer (federal government), the union, and the Treasury Board to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which subsequently supported his claim. It took eight years to exhaust all legal paths, but in the end Mossop lost the case. Despite this failure, the court's decision opened up a national debate on gay rights and on the necessity to develop a new model of the “family.” It was intersectionality theory that facilitated progress in law and legislation (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991, 1992; Grabham et al., eds., 2009; Burri & Schiek, eds., 2009; Kantola & Nousiainen, 2010) and affected other branches of science. With antecedents in critical race studies (Anthias & YuvalDavis, 1983; hooks, 1984), intersectionality research has been employed in a number of disciplines, such as sociology (Collins, 1998a,b; McCall, 2005; Dill & Zambrana, eds, 2009), economics (Brewer et al., 2002), political science (Hawkesworth, 2003), literature (Brah, 1996; Oleksy, 1994), film (May & Ferri, 2002; Oleksy, 2007), psychology (Cole, 2009), and in other areas. In some texts, intersectionality even defies placement in a discipline, for instance Elizabeth Spelman's concept of the “manyness of women” in The Inessential Woman (1988). Intersectionality has been used as a theoretical concept, a policy option, and a popular culture notion. Unlike most theories, it has been adopted in hard and soft form, critical and entertaining; published in books and journal articles by acclaimed scholars but also used playfully on the internet. The tension, or conflictuality that intersectionality ignites among scholars in the United States where it was first conceived, is not merely generational but primarily so. In her cultural narrative covering the 2008 presidential elections in the United States, Big Girls Don't Cry. The Election that Changed Everything for American Women (2010), Rebecca Traister depicts intersectionality as “the youthful attempt to repair racial rifts within the feminist movement” (p. 155), accomplished by young feminists who hailed the “new” development in theory as “progressive…
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[and] catalyzed by the diversity of the Internet” (p. 156). However, older feminists, says Traister: the ones who saw their gender as the most central inhibitor of political parity, the ones who were weighing sexism against other oppressions and pointing out that women often came last in line, worried that the breadth of intersectional priorities thinned the interest in women, vilified older white women and left feminists too unfocused to move forward. (p. 157) Subsequently Traister quotes Linda Hirschman from the Washington Post who pointedly expresses such concern: [Hilary Clinton's campaign] revealed what many in the movement know — that if feminism is a social-justice-foreveryone (with the possible exception of middle-class white women) movement, then gender is just one commitment among many. And when the other causes call, the movement will dissolve. (Traister, 2010, p. 157) That intersectionality, one of most diverse and controversial contemporary concepts in feminism, has been appropriated by young feminists is best testified to by the fact that it is employed in many highly regarded and popular blogs, such as Feministing, Racialicious, Salon's women's blog Broadsheet, and others. In Body Impolitic blog, “Tara,” an obese woman of color writes: Over the last few years, without having lost one of my 275 or so pounds, in some contexts I've stopped being fat… because my hair has gotten gray enough to make me look old. I notice this most on public transit–people who five years ago would have glared at me for seeking out a seat (because I was fat) now get up for me (because I'm old). People who would have really minded sitting next to me, even though the BART seats are plenty big enough for two people my size not to touch each others' hips (because I was fat) now sit down blithely next to me (because I'm old). People who showed clear disdain for me if I was using the escalator instead of the stairs, or holding on to a railing (because I was fat) now show sympathy and patience (because I'm old). In those contexts, age trumps fat, and being old replaces being fat. In the doctor's office, however, I'm still fat. In a cafe or restaurant where all the chairs have arms, I'm fat. On an airplane, I'm still more fat than old, though that one might be changing. If a black woman transitions to being male, she stays black and becomes male. In some contexts, I've stayed fat and also become old, but in others I've ceased to be fat, because I'm old. (Laurie and Debbie's blog) In the next entry, Tara concludes: I literally could not tell my own story as a person without intersectionality. Having found myself on the cusp of and entrenched in a number of different identity categories (for disclosure, those would be: biracial (half-Taiwanese/ Chinese, half-white/Jewish), queer, raised by mixed-class parents (but mostly middle class), high femme, cisgendered, able-bodied, and fat) I have never truly found a
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“home” in any single-politic movement. (Laurie and Debbie's blog)
This narrative seems to trivialize intersectionality, but it also illustrates how intersections travel with cycles of our lives. I have used major fragments of these two entries because they clearly demonstrate that recent developments in social computing technologies, in giving people the tools to join diverse social networks, create niches for “living” intersectionality, for voicing specific forms of “lived experience.” This role of intersectionality should not be overlooked, especially in view of the fact that most scholarly literature on the subject, written in what Patricia Hill Collins describes as postmodern “exclusionary language” with its gatekeeping function, is addressed to pen-colleagues and postgraduate students (1998a, 142). However, these quotations also touch upon a more serious issue. They demonstrate that the openendedness of intersectionality embedded in the “and so on” or “etcetera,” conspicuously and almost unanimously used by scholars at the end of any string of intersections, precisely points not only to intersectionality's plurality but also to its ad infinitum quality. The question then arises: is the “diluted” character of intersectionality a deficit or a strength? There are at least two responses to this. Leslie McCall (2005), whose tri-partite proposition on intersectional methodology will be discussed below, suggests that interest in intersectionality was spurred by a postmodern “critique of gender-based and race-based research for failing to account for lived experience at neglected points of intersection” (1780). But this formulation elicits concerns such as this: by removing altogether the notion of a ‘center,’ that is, a belief in some sort of verifiable, objective knowledge that one can deploy with authority, the rubric of deconstruction disempowers the very same historically marginalized groups who helped create the space for postmodernism to emerge. (Collins, 1998a, p. 145)
For Collins (1998b), intersectionality is only a heuristic device which “references the ability of social phenomena such as race, class, and gender to mutually construct one another,” and she adopts her discrete categories of gender, class, and nation to situate intersectionality in the discussion of (American) family. However, both Collins and McCall agree on methodology, i.e. the importance of studying groups “with each group encountering a distinctive constellation of experiences based on its placement in hierarchical power relations” (Collins, 1998a, p. 205) via self-narratives. Ethnographic research has already been used in multicultural projects (Fischer, in Diane Carson and Lester D. Friedman, 1995), but it has examined groups which shared a common identity marker or markers. Intersectional method, on the other hand, observes the way various identity markers interact in a single subjectivity; therefore, some identity markers may not be shared by all subjects. Consequently, intersectional study of groups across subjective differentials has to account for diversity among group members. It seems fair to say that some identity markers will be shared by all members, and some will not.
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Such methodological issues have been taken into consideration in the work of scholars who have attempted to assign to intersectionality the role of methodology or methodological orientation. I have chosen a “classic” text in this respect. Published in 2005, Leslie McCall in “The Complexity of Intersectionality” wonders why, “despite the emergence of intersectionality as a major paradigm of research in women's studies and elsewhere, there has been little discussion of how to study intersectionality; that is, of its methodology” (1771). In response to her question, she puts forward three methodological perspectives: “anticategorical complexity,” “intracategorical complexity,” and “intercategorical complexity.” “Anticategorical complexity,” argues McCall, aims to deconstruct master categories and narratives that “fraternized on the male side of the modern male/female binary” (p. 1776), as well as to integrate women as subjects of critical analysis. This method encompasses the criticism of multiculturalism with its identity politics to construct group boundaries. Feminist thinkers began by deconstructing these frontiers through the questioning of the absence of women as subjects of research. They subsequently undermined “the very edifice of modern society — its founding philosophies, disciplines and concepts” (McCall, 2005, p. 1776). Significantly, black feminists critiqued also the exclusive nature of early feminist theory as written from the position of whiteness. “Intracategorical complexity” goes further. It contests universalising essentialism in identity politics and approaches inequalities through lived experience at – heretofore – neglected axes of social stratification such as, for instance, the interlocked categories of gender, race, and sexuality. The method works with a single social group methodically untangling the discrete categories of oppression permeating each other or one another. Here, McCall harks back to past records of racial relations in the United States when black women seemed to achieve greater equality with men of their race relative to white women because the conditions of slavery and white supremacy forced them to work on par with black men, yet black women were also more vulnerable to sexual violence because the whites did not consider them worth protecting as women (p. 1780). This opinion becomes even more complex when we consider the fact that black women worked on par with black men outside home, but they were also main caretakers of the family, bore children and saw them sold into slavery. Traditionally, intracategorical method works through narratives, such as slave women's personal records, for instance Jacobs's (1861) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Drumgoold's (1898) A Slave Girl's Story, Burton's (1909) Memories of Childhood Slavery Days, and what we would now call a second-generation memoir, Murray's (1956) Proud Shoes. The Story of an American Family. As McCall defines: “they take as their subject an individual or an individual's experience and extrapolate illustratively to the broader social location embodied by the individual” (1781). Intracategorical complexity characterizes tensions between the first wave of women's movement and the anti-slavery movement in the United States, as Patricia Hill Collins (1998a,b) and Avtar Brah and Ann Phoenix (2004) argue in regard to Sojourner Truth's avant-garde speech “Ain't I a Woman?”: “Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter, I think between the
Negroes of the South and the women of the North – all talking about rights – the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this talking about? That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me any best place. And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm. I have plowed [sic], I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And ain't I a woman? I could work as much, and eat as much as any man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne children and seen most of then sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman?…”. (Brah & Phoenix, 2004, p. 77) The speech predates contemporary concerns with what Ken Plummer termed “intimate citizenship” (Plummer, 2003). In part, Plummer addresses sensitizing concepts which have been circulated recently, such as “outsiders within” (Collins, 1999) or “wanting ones,” a perception neatly captured by Judith Butler (2007, p. 41)2 — with a particular emphasis on story-telling (Oleksy, ed. 2009, pp. 4–5). Sojourner Truth, not a citizen herself, skilfully mixes elements of elegy and protest, and uses her own story to “construct” herself in the slave-owning society. Her “political identity … is never taken as a given but is performed through rhetoric and narration” (Brah & Phoenix, 2004, p. 77). Reliance on narratives also characterizes the third mode of intersectional methodology: “intercategorical complexity” or – rather – “categorical approach,” since McCall (2005, p. 1786) continues using the latter term in this section of her article. The subject of this kind of analysis is a “multigroup, and the method is systematically comparative”. McCall explains: … the type of categorical approach I am developing here goes further in exploring whether meaningful inequalities among groups even exist in the first place. Perhaps inequalities were once large but now they are small, or in one place they are large but in another they are small. (1785) Here, she calls attention to the inherent difficulty of this kind of research methodology. Earlier in her text, when she addresses the intra-categorical complexity, she first gives examples of the previous multicultural research based on identity politics, such as comparisons of “working-class women to working-class men,” “Latina domestic workers to an earlier generation of African American domestic workers,” etc., in order to conclude that “some generalizations about the group must be made. The point is not to deny the importance – both material and discursive – of categories but to focus on the process by which they are produced, experienced, reproduced, and resisted in everyday life.” Since such studies “cannot possibly supersede immediately the expansive terrain of [their] predecessors, [they] advance in some directions but not all” (1783). The subtle line that advances McCall's methodology in this category beyond previous research based on identity politics is what she calls unraveling “one by one the influences of gender, race, class, and so on” and showing how they route through one another.
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Interesting examples of such large projects are carried out within the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity, for instance: “Does Stress ‘Get Under the Skin’ Differently By Social Status?”, “Identifying Essential Bio-Social Pathways for Cardiovascular Disease Morbidity,” “Differences in Risk Factors by Hypertension Status Among Postmenopausal African American and Latino Women” (The Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity). Lykke (2010, p. 68) likewise presents a tri-partite understanding of the history of intersectionality, but she brings up the concept of genealogy, which constructs her book and could facilitate further understanding of the complexity of intersectionality. Lykke puts forward three clusters of feminist analysis of intersections: explicit feminist theorizings of intersectionality, that is, theories that – like Crenshaw's theory – explicitly use the concept “intersectionality”; implicit feminist theorizings of intersectionality, that is, theories that focus on intersections, but without using the concept ‘intersectionality’ as the frame of interpretation; feminist theorizings under other names, that is, theories that concentrate on intersections, but while using other concepts and frames than ‘intersectionality.’ (p. 68) Before Lykke unpacks each of them, she recapitulates Leslie McCall's groupings of anti-categorical, intra-categorical, and inter-categorical intersectional analyses because she fears that McCall's categories might crumple onto hers or be used interchangeably. But there is no such danger since – as Lykke also acknowledges – McCall is not preoccupied with implicit uses of intersectionality and those categorized under other names. McCall's article responds to the dire need for methodology in the field, and it fulfills this requirement. On closer inspection, however, when Lykke discloses her categories, it becomes clear that she follows the same route as McCall does in her proposition. She begins with the presentation of structural intersectionality referencing, among others, Young's (1997) Intersecting Voices in the context of structural vis à vis political intersectionality as well as her concept of “seriality”; i.e. the way in which oppressive structures permeate each other. Young also introduced – reminds Lykke – the concept of a group as a political collective, whose members share a common cause. Lykke then momentarily moves to discuss poststructuralist approaches to intersectionality which can “grasp the construction of subjectivities in discourses that weave together narratives of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, age, and so on” (73) and substantiates this definition with examples of analyses performed by two Danish scholars, Dorte Staunæs and Baukje Prins. Staunæs (2003) investigated a group of male Danish and Turkish schoolchildren with particular emphasis on variability of social life and subjectification processes. In a somewhat similar fashion, Baukje Prins (2006) gathers her material from ethnographic research involving her former primary school cohorts. Prins's and Staunæs's research is carried out within the anti-categorical “camp,” says Lykke, and adds that both articles clearly demonstrate that “McCall's classifications are too crude to
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grasp nuances. Neither Staunæs nor Prins would simply reject categories” (p. 73). Lykke wraps up her analysis of the three modes of theorizing intersectionality with reference to “implicit” forms: the aforementioned speech by Sojourner Truth and another address on gender and class made by Alexandra Kollontai (Aлeкcáндpa Mиxáйлoвнa Кoллoнтáй – née Domontovich, Дoмoнтóвич), a revolutionary Bolshevik (later Menshevik) feminist and Soviet diplomat. Lykke presents Kollontai as a predecessor of “postcolonial and anti-racist feminist critiques of notions of ‘global sisterhood’” and vehement critic of bourgeois Russian women's “feminist identity discourses about an unproblematic unity among women” (77). This formulation is somewhat far-fetched because we first need to answer the question who Alexandra Kollontai was. She was an aristocrat on her father's side of family, spoke several languages, was well-traveled, and visited England, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, and the USA before her involvement with the Bolsheviks. She worked with Lenin and – later – with Stalin. After the October revolution of 1917 she became People's Commisar for Social Welfare. In the USSR, she, a former aristocrat, became the first woman ambassador to Norway, Mexico, and Sweden. There is no question that Kollontai was an advocate of women's rights. But was she an opportunist? Before I answer this question, I would like to make a comparison between two famous feminists, Alexandra Kollontai and bell hooks, who appear on the pages of Lykke's book in dissimilar and – I would argue – disputable contexts. In her chapter on “Shifting Boundaries,” Lykke slashes hooks who “does not find differences between the academically eloquent [author] and the silent majority of poor women whom she speaks about” (p. 169). Lykke quotes two passages from hooks' (1984, 2000) Feminist Theory: From Center to Margin, which I will also – for clarity – cite at length: Feminism in the United States has never emerged from the women who are most victimized by sexist oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spriritually — women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority (p. 1)We resist hegemonic dominance of feminist thought by insisting that it is a theory in the making, that we must necessarily criticize, question, re-examine, and explore new possibilities. My persistent critique has been informed by my status as a member of an oppressed group, my experience of sexist exploitation and discrimination, and the sense that prevailing feminist analysis has not been the force shaping my feminist consciousness. (pp. 10–11) Lykke critiques hooks' standpoint by indicating that “without further reflections, the academically well-educated narrator and the poor women are inscribed in one and the same ‘we’-category, based on a stance in identity politics” (p. 169). I see this criticism as problematic for two reasons. First, Lykke erroneously attributes hooks' views above to the book that was first published in 1984 (she quotes “2000” as the only publication date). When hooks wrote it, feminism had been appropriated by white, middle class women, and
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standpoint theory was in the making. Second, in Feminist Theory hooks critiques the assertion that all women are oppressed, regardless of their social standing. In one of the early expressions of intersectional consciousness, hooks says: This assertion [that all women are oppressed] implies that women share a common lot, that factors like class, race, religion, sexual preference, etc. do not create a diversity of experience that determines the extent to which sexism will be an oppressive force in the lives of individual women. (p. 5)
Bell hooks is wont to create ferment in feminist theory, yet this is much needed in scientific work. But, she is not an opportunist, which Nina Lykke seems to imply. She had every right to speak in the name of poor black women because she had also come from a poor, black, working class, Christian fundamentalist family. However, to the question posed earlier regarding whether or not Alexandra Kollontai was an opportunist, the answer can only be complex. She was consistently, throughout her life, a feminist fighting for women's rights, and she was trapped in politics, which she did not design but had to endure. But she also held high-ranking positions in the party and an oppressive government which was responsible for murdering thousands of people, and she did not even have to witness this because she was a diplomat on missions away from the Soviet Union. Despite our differences of opinion on bell hooks' position in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, I regard Nina Lykke's Feminist Studies: A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology and Writing as an important contribution to the minimal shelf of intersectionality pedagogy. Generally, amongst the wealth of intersectionality scholarship, very little attention has been paid to education. Theoretical books and journal papers are on the reading lists of graduate courses; however, until recently there have been scarce teaching aids addressed to students in undergraduate and graduate classrooms.3 Lykke's book fills in this space. Lykke describes Feminist Studies as “an advanced textbook balancing introductory overviews and cutting-edge reflections on current issues in feminist theory” (p. 3). The book is eclectic with some material previously published, which is dutifully acknowledged in the preface. Even though Lykke devotes only one section of her study to intersectionality, the whole narrative is conducted in a genealogical fashion, as she demonstrates the evolution of critical thought that laid foundations for the theory, methodology, and practice of intersectionality. The book consists of four parts, the first of which is introductory, the second concentrates on intersectionality, the third on feminist methodologies with a focus on academic and creative writing, and the closing part addresses feminist hermeneutics. Since Nina Lykke defines her position in the book as that of a guide, she locates her situatedness through a dialog with herself in the introductory chapter. There, she sketches her academic and intellectual autobiography as that of a scholar of feminist studies which is a “postdisciplinary discipline” (p. 8). Feminist studies, to Lykke, walks on “two legs … [I]t is both integrated into the traditional disciplines and established as an interdisciplinary field of its own” (p. 8).
There are important feats of Lykke's book. She wraps up major intersectional literature produced so far and offers the much awaited classification of categories within multilayered intersectionality research. Locating intersectionality within post-disciplinary feminist studies is a shrewd motion. A review of literature proves that intersectionality defies disciplinary placement, even though it inspires thinking in various disciplines. Also, it certainly “belongs” to feminism; it is a theory, methodology, and policy tool that attends to feminist undertakings. In her recent article, Davis (2008) makes the case for intersectionality as a “success story” (67). She initially asks a question: “How a theory which is so vague could come to be regarded by so many as the cutting edge of contemporary feminist theory” (69)? Having drawn on a concept in philosophy of science, she surmises that – precisely – such aspects as intersectionality's open-endedness, haziness, ambiguity, incompleteness, etc. paradoxically have contributed to its success. This is fully observable in the number of disciplines within which it has been used, its impact on policy making,4 and the enthusiasm it has garnered amongst feminists in the “West”. As Davis writes, [intersectionality] has generated heated theoretical debates throughout the US and Europe, becoming a standard topic in undergraduate courses, graduate seminars and conferences…. Today, it is unimaginable that a women's studies program would only focus on gender. … It is bon ton for women's studies professors to ask their undergraduate and graduate students to reconsider the topics of their research in the light of multiple differences. (68) I find this opinion over-optimistic. It is of course a truism to say that Europe is not homogenous; not even the European Union. But it should be noted that, whereas gender studies institutions and programs flourish in most “old” member states of the EU, they are scarce in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) and rarely offer undergraduate, let alone graduate, studies. Expanding unemployment and progressing demographic decline affect university enrollment figures in CEEC, which translates into young people's decisions to seek degree programs in areas that are more likely to give them jobs in the future. Only non-degree programs on gender issues addressed, for instance, to school teachers attract larger student populations.5 Davis (2008, p. 79) expresses high praise for intersectionality because “it encourages complexity, stimulates creativity, and avoids premature closure, tantalizing feminist scholars to raise new questions and explore uncharted territory”. Even though I share her enthusiasm for this theory, I see that it has found itself at the cross-roads. Despite the fact that intersectionality has been used in countless contexts, in scholarly texts and – playfully – on the internet, its success should be measured in how it impacts legislation. Intersectionality has been designed in this context and for this purpose. Thirty two years after Kimberlé Crenshaw had penned the critical term “intersectionality” in the legal context, and after scholars of different disciplines had been providing countless inequality markers and describing the processes through which they permeate one another,
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legislation still lags behind. In the introduction to a recently published Institutionalizing Intersectionality in Europe (2010), the editors Johanna Kantola and Kevät Nousiainen argue that the European Commission, in its current legislative initiative, has proposed a directive on “multiple discrimination,” instead of “intersectionality,” and thus favored “anti-discrimination policy as opposed to other measures in furthering equality, thereby narrowing down the debate” (p. 456). Similar problems have been reported by law researches in the United States (e.g. Uccellari, 2008, 24–49). The above notwithstanding, there are very few feminist theories that have made such a splendid career among young feminists as intersectionality has. Intersectionality research has been popularized in the academia and beyond. Feminism and intersectonality have been channeled online and made accessible to millions of women. Models of activism in the countries with developed tradition in feminism have changed. Whereas feminists in new European democracies still organize grassroots conferences and meetings, take part in manifestations against homophobia, celebrate the Women's Day on March 8, young women in the West delve into feminism in private, on the net. “Perhaps it [makes] their feminism a less radical and radicalizing choice,” says Rebecca Traister, “but it also [makes] it far more available” (2010, p. 155). Above all, the open-endedness of the concept, along with a possibility to place one's own agency into the picture, as has been shown above, has attracted young women to intersectionality. The thought underlying intersectionality has been a process and lived experience. It looks back to slavery before and after written records and to human trafficking — past and present. Anti-slavery movements, human and equal rights movements have been its trajectories. It also harks back to the questionings of multiculturalism as a theory and methodology. But its real success will be measured in how it will benefit the underprivileged. Will legislators listen to researchers and look into how different axes interlock in a single individual experience? Or will they go for simplified methods? This still remains to be seen. Acknowledgements I am thankful for comments from colleagues who participated in the American Studies Colloquium Series at the University of Warsaw, where I presented a preliminary version of this article. For financial support during the initial work on this article, I thank the European Commission's Erasmus Mundus GEMMA program, which allowed me to spend two months at the University of New Jersey — Rutgers, as well as the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Endnotes 1 In: Two Women: The Poetry of Jeannette Foster and Valerie Taylor (Chicago: Womanpress, 1976). Valerie Taylor was a pen name of Velma Nacella Young (1913–1997), feminist, lesbian novelist, poet, and social worker. For more information see Marcia Gallo, “A Tribute to Valerie Taylor, Lesbian Writer and Revolutionary,” New Politics, vol. XII-2, Winter 2009. 2 Butler says: “Given the complexity and heterogeneity of modes of national belonging, the nation-state can only reiterate its own basis for legitimation by literally producing the nation that serves as the basis for its
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legitimation. … modes of national belonging designated by “the nation” are thoroughly stipulative and criterial: one is not simply dropped from the nation; rather, one is found to be wanting and, so, becomes a “wanting one” through the designation and its implicit and active criteria” (2007, 31). 3 There are numerous articles on policy options in the EU. See, for instance, Kantola, Johanna and Nousiainen, Kevät (2009); Burri, Susanne and Schiek, Dagmar (2009); and Kóczé, Angé (2009). 4 The situation differs in the United States because it is predicted that the universities there will not suffer from demographic decline since the birth rates of African American and Latino populations have been relatively high. 5 See also a book on intersectionality addressed to undergraduate students published in ATHENA Teaching Series, Teaching Intersectionality. Putting Gender at the Centre, ed. Martha Franken et al. (2009).
References Anthias, Floya, & Yuval-Davis, Nira (1983). Contextualizing feminism: Ethnic, gender and class divisions. Feminist Review, 15, 62−75. Brah, Avtar (1996). Cartographies of diaspora, contesting identities. London & New York: Routledge. Brah, Avtar, & Ann, Phoenix (2004). Ain't I a woman? Revisiting intersectionality. Journal of International Women's Studies, 5, 75−86. Brewer, Rose M., Conrad, Cecilia A., & King, Mary C. (2002). the complexities and potential theorizing gender, caste, race, and class. Feminist Economics, 8(2), 3−18. Burri, Susanne, & Schiek, Dagmar (2009). Multiple discrimination in EU law. Opportunities for legal responses to intersectional gender discrimination. European Commission. Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities. Burton, Annie (1909). Memories of childhood slavery days. Boston: Ross Publishing Company. Cole, Elizabeth R. (2009). Intersectionality and research in psychology. American Psychologist, 64(3), 170−180. Collins, Patricia Hill (1998a). Fighting words: Black women and the search for justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 1998. Collins, Patricia Hill (1998b). It's all in the family: Intersections of gender, race, and nation. Hypatia, 13(3), 62−82. Collins, Patricia Hill (1999). Reflections on the outsider within. Journal of Career Development, 26(1), 85−88. Conaghan, Joanne (2007). Intersectionality and UK equality initiatives. South African Journal of Human Rights, 23(2), 317−354. Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics (pp. 139−167). : University of Chicago Legal Forum. Davis, Kathy (2008). Intersectionality as buzzword: A sociology of science perspective on what makes a Feminist Theory successful. Feminist Studies, 9(67), 67−85. DeGraffenreid v. General Motors Assembly Division, St. Louis, 413 F. Supp. 142, 143 [E. D. Mo. 1976] (www.leagle.com/xmlcontentlinks.aspx? gfile=558%20F.2d%20480, accessed July 8, 2010). Dill, Bonnie Thornton, & Zambrana, Ruth Enid (Eds.). (2009). Emerging intersections: Race, class, and gender in theory, policy, and practice. New Brunswick, New Jersey & London: Rutgers University Press. Drumgoold, Kate (1898). A slave girl's story. Brooklyn: The Author. Franken, Martha, Woodward, Allison, Cabó, Anna, & Bagihole, Barbara M. (2009). Teaching intersectionality. Putting gender at the centre. Utrecht: Athena. Grabham, Emily, Cooper, Davina, Krishnadas, Jane, & Herman, Didi (Eds.). (2009). Beyond intersectionality. Law, power and the politics of location. New York: Routledge & Cavendish. Hawkesworth, Mary (2003). Congressional enactments of race-gender: Towards a theory of race-gendered institutions. American Political Science Review, 97(4), 529−550. hooks, bell (1984). Feminist theory. From margin to center. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. hooks, bell (2000). Feminist theory. From margin to center (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Jacobs, Harriet A. (1861). Incidents in the life of a slave girl. Boston: The Author. Kantola, Johanna, & Nousiainen, Kevät (2009). Institutionalizing intersectionality in Europe. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 11(4), 459−477. Kóczé, Angé (with contribution from Raluca Maria Popa). (2009). Missing Intersectionality: Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in Current Research and Policies on Romani Women in Europe. Policy Studies Series. Budapest: Central European University.
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Lewis, Gail (2009). Celebrating intersectionality? Debates on a multi-faceted concept in gender studies: Themes from a conference. European Journal of Women's Studies, 16, 203−210. Lykke, Nina (2010). Feminist studies: A guide to intersectional theory, methodology and writing. New York & London: Routledge. May, Vivian A., & Ferri, Beth A. (2002). “I'm a Wheelchair Girt Now.” Abjection, intersectionality, and subjectivity in atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. Women's Studies Quarterly, 30, 131−150. McCall, Leslie (2005). The complexity of intersectionality. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30(3), 1771−1800. Mossop v. Canada case ([1993] 1 S.C.R. 554). (scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/ en/1993/1993scr1-554/1993scr1-554.html; accessed February 6, 2011). Murray, Pauli (1956). Proud shoes. The story of an American family. New York: Harper & Brothers. Oleksy, Elżbieta (1994). The structure of kinship. Ellen Glasgow and Zora Neale Hurston. In I. Janicka-Świderska (Ed.), Studies in literature and language: In honour of Adela Styczyńska. : Łódź: Łódź University Press 1994. Oleksy, Elżbieta (2005). ‘Women, don't interfere with us; we're fighting for Poland’: Polish mothers and transgressive others. In M. Mikula (Ed.), Women, activism and social change (pp. 179−197). London and New York: Routledge. Oleksy, Elżbieta (2006). The politics of representing gender in contemporary Polish cinema and visual art. In A. Imre (Ed.), East European cinemas (pp. 49–62). Oleksy, Elżbieta (2007). Intricate interdependencies and female buddy movies. In J. Maszewska, & Z. Maszewski (Eds.), Walking on a trail of words. Essays in honor of Agnieszka Salska. : Łódź: Łódź University Press 2007. Plummer, Ken (2003). Intimate citizenship: Private decisions and public dialogues. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Prins, Baukje (2006). Narrative accounts of origins. A blind spot in the intersection approach. European Journal of Women's Studies. Special Issue on Intersectionality, 13(3), 277−290. Spelman, Elizabeth (1988). Inessential woman: Problems of exclusion in feminist thought. Boston: Beacon Press.
Staunæs, Dorte (2003). Where have all the subjects gone? Bringing together the concepts of intersectionality and subjectification. NORA. Nordic Journal of Women's Studies, 11(3), 1−10. Traister, Rebecca (2010). Big girls don't cry: The election that changed everything for American women. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press. Uccellari, Paola (2008). Multiple discrimination: How law can reflect reality. The equal rights review, 24−49. Young, Iris M. (1997). Intersecting voices: Dilemmas of gender, political philosophy, and policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Further Reading Butler, Judith, & Charkravorty Spivak, Gayatri (2007). Who sings the nation state? Language, politics, belonging. London, New York, Calcutta: Seagull. Carson, Diane, & Friedman, Lester D. (1995). Shared differences. multicultural media and practical pedagogy. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Crenshaw, Kimberlé W., & Harris, Luke Ch. (2009). A Primer on Intersectionality Booklet. African American Policy Forum, Vassar College. Poughkeepsie, NY: Columbia Law School http://aapf.org/tool_to_speak_out/ intersectionality-primer/(accessed July 8, 2010). Oleksy, Elżbieta (1997). Cross-discipline and cross-race: Women's bonding in contemporary southern fiction and film. In M. Wilczyński (Ed.), Canons, revisions, supplements in American literature and culture (pp. 262−269). Poznań: Bene Nati Press. Taylor, Valerie (1976). Two women: The poetry of Jeannette Foster and Valerie Taylor. Chicago: Womanpress. The Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity, URL www.crge.umd.edu/ about_us.html accessed December 2, 2010. Laurie and Debbie's blog, URL http://laurietobyedison.com/discuss?p=512 accessed December 12, 2009.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Women's Studies International Forum j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / w s i f
Review Essay
Intesectionality at the cross-roads Elżbieta H. Oleksy University of Łódź, Poland
Contents
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I am a woman, a lesbian, a poet, poor, handicapped, radical, Indian, over seventy— an eight-time loser. How shall I not be a revolutionary? How shall I not see my sister in every woman, my brother in any man, my child to cherish in every child? When they dragged Jane Kennedy into solitary that was my arm the cops were twisting. When they dropped napalm on the rice paddies that was my skin on fire, that was my blood running out hot and sticky. Goddess, give me eight kinds of strength to fight back. Valerie Taylor, “The Sweet Little Old Gray-Haired Lady in Sneakers”1 Despite a multitude of voices, over the last three decades, announcing the advent of intersectionality, its practitioners 0277-5395/$ – see front matter © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2011.02.002
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cannot come to a common understanding as to whether it is a critical concept/theory, methodology, or social practice. If it is a theory, is it “anti-categorical,” “intra-categorical,” or “intercategorical” (McCall, 2005, 1773)? Or, perhaps, “explicit,” “implicit,” or “under other names” (Lykke, 2010, 68)? Should we call it intersectionality, multiple discrimination, interferences, shared differences, intricate interdependencies, different serial belongings, interlocking oppressions, etc.? And beyond this confusion, anyone who would like to join the intersectionality crowd and express her opinion on the subject in the midst of all these queries, risks being called a “scholarly dilettante who perpetually chase[s] scholarly fads” (Collins, in Dill & Zambrana, 2009, vii). Questions then arise: is intersectionality a temporary fashion? Has it exhausted its limits? Has it found itself at the cross-roads? In an attempt at answering these questions, I will outline the history of the concept, present its main theoretical directions, and think about its future, especially in the context of what is perceived as contemporary “generational and digital divide.” Leading scholars have given intersectionality a name (Crenshaw, 1989), methodology (McCall, 2005), and situated standpoint (Collins, 2000). Books and articles burgeon as intersectionality becomes an established approach — a “feminist success story” (Davis, 67). But there are also dissenting voices (hooks, 1984, 2000; Collins, 1998a,b) and ones predicting intersectionality's demise (Conaghan, 2007). At its most basic level, the concept of intersectionality is used to cover the interconnections between various social differentials, such as gender, race, ethnic origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. Intersectionality theories came in the wake of – or on the tomb of – multiculturalism, which recognizes diversification of cultures
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and criticizes the silencing of minority voices, the neglect of minorities' contributions to world culture, and the rejection of alternate visions — a process of excluding identities other than those of the majority. Multiculturalism typically looks at groups, rather than individuals, and explores group identity, rather than subjectivity. Intersectionality goes further; it replaces the modernist emphasis on identities in common with a post-modernist, post-structural concept of subjectivity, i.e., a person's sense of self. The latter perception embraces both stability and change and signifies an endless process of becoming. With such a change of emphasis came a shift from identities in common, that is to say, from commonality and inclusion, from shared experience, to its opposite: exclusiveness and taking subject positions. In feminist theory, for example, the emphasis on the commonality of women's experience worldwide brought a questioning of the second wave of women's rights activism. For example, many black commentators (e.g. hooks, 1984, 2000) challenged those varieties of feminism which perceive the roots of women's predicament exclusively in their disproportionate access to the means of production characteristic of wealthy Western civilizations. For, disclosing the material foundations of women's social submission, as well as the relationship between the mode of production and women's status – goals advocated by Marxist feminists – fails to embrace the experience of black women, who, like women in numerous Eastern European countries, traditionally had to work outside the home (Oleksy, 2005, 2006), unlike their white, Western, middle-class counterparts. Intersectionality was to heal such ideological fissures. But did it? Before I attempt to answer this question, I will outline some basic knowledge about this laden concept. If we think of a single place where it was instituted, we can look back to the year 1978 and an initiative taken at the University of Maryland. A small research group was created there whose aim was to explore the intersections of gender, race, and ethnicity. Twenty years later a Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity (CRGE) was founded there, whose mission was to promote research and faculty and graduate student development through the exploration of the intersections of gender, ethnicity, race, and other interlocking oppressions as they shape identities and subjectivities in multifaceted social relations. The critical term itself was coined by Crenshaw (1989) who, in her essay “Demarginalizng the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics”, illustrated it with a crossroad metaphor which was helpful in an early period of intersectionality research, but disregarded later by some feminists as too static and unable to convey the idiosyncrasies of intersectionality (Lewis, 2009; Lykke, 2010). Yet the initial metaphor, and the theory accompanying it, is still influential. In a recent text, which appeared in an internet source “A Primer on Intersectionality” (2009), Crenshaw (1989) presents an example of how intersectional analysis could be applied to social phenomena. Crenshaw followed and described a court case on gender and race discriminatory practice, which took place at General Motors (GM). In this particular case, GM wanted to hire people for front office jobs and for heavy industrial work. Three categories of candidates placed their dossiers: white women, black women, and black men. White women were hired for office jobs and black men were employed to perform heavy
industrial jobs. Five black women, who had not been hired, took the case to court arguing that they had been discriminated on account of interlocked categories of gender and race. They lost the case. They faced intersectional invisibility because at that time anti-discrimination laws addressed only one type of discrimination. Since white women were hired by GM and so were black men, the company felt that it had obeyed the antidiscrimination policy. The court ruled that this particular complaint “might state a cause of action for race discrimination, sex discrimination, or alternatively either, but not a combination of both” (DeGraffenreid v. General Motors Assembly Division, 1976). Thinking about how such a “big miss” could have happened, Crenshaw (1989) concluded that in the claimants' case the court considered their discrimination axes parallel rather than intersecting. They could only “state a cause of action” for one form of discrimination, rather than more overlapping causes of discrimination. Another early court case predating contemporary attempts to change legislation began in 1985 with the Mossop v. Canada case ([1993] 1 S.C.R. 554). The plaintiff (Brian Mossop) who lived in the same sex relationship with another man, took a day off work to attend the funeral of his partner's father. The agreement between the Treasury Board and Mossop's union afforded up to four days upon the death of a member of an employee's “immediate family,” a term signifying a spouse of the opposite gender. Mossop's request was turned down. He then filed a grievance against the employer (federal government), the union, and the Treasury Board to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which subsequently supported his claim. It took eight years to exhaust all legal paths, but in the end Mossop lost the case. Despite this failure, the court's decision opened up a national debate on gay rights and on the necessity to develop a new model of the “family.” It was intersectionality theory that facilitated progress in law and legislation (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991, 1992; Grabham et al., eds., 2009; Burri & Schiek, eds., 2009; Kantola & Nousiainen, 2010) and affected other branches of science. With antecedents in critical race studies (Anthias & YuvalDavis, 1983; hooks, 1984), intersectionality research has been employed in a number of disciplines, such as sociology (Collins, 1998a,b; McCall, 2005; Dill & Zambrana, eds, 2009), economics (Brewer et al., 2002), political science (Hawkesworth, 2003), literature (Brah, 1996; Oleksy, 1994), film (May & Ferri, 2002; Oleksy, 2007), psychology (Cole, 2009), and in other areas. In some texts, intersectionality even defies placement in a discipline, for instance Elizabeth Spelman's concept of the “manyness of women” in The Inessential Woman (1988). Intersectionality has been used as a theoretical concept, a policy option, and a popular culture notion. Unlike most theories, it has been adopted in hard and soft form, critical and entertaining; published in books and journal articles by acclaimed scholars but also used playfully on the internet. The tension, or conflictuality that intersectionality ignites among scholars in the United States where it was first conceived, is not merely generational but primarily so. In her cultural narrative covering the 2008 presidential elections in the United States, Big Girls Don't Cry. The Election that Changed Everything for American Women (2010), Rebecca Traister depicts intersectionality as “the youthful attempt to repair racial rifts within the feminist movement” (p. 155), accomplished by young feminists who hailed the “new” development in theory as “progressive…
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[and] catalyzed by the diversity of the Internet” (p. 156). However, older feminists, says Traister: the ones who saw their gender as the most central inhibitor of political parity, the ones who were weighing sexism against other oppressions and pointing out that women often came last in line, worried that the breadth of intersectional priorities thinned the interest in women, vilified older white women and left feminists too unfocused to move forward. (p. 157) Subsequently Traister quotes Linda Hirschman from the Washington Post who pointedly expresses such concern: [Hilary Clinton's campaign] revealed what many in the movement know — that if feminism is a social-justice-foreveryone (with the possible exception of middle-class white women) movement, then gender is just one commitment among many. And when the other causes call, the movement will dissolve. (Traister, 2010, p. 157) That intersectionality, one of most diverse and controversial contemporary concepts in feminism, has been appropriated by young feminists is best testified to by the fact that it is employed in many highly regarded and popular blogs, such as Feministing, Racialicious, Salon's women's blog Broadsheet, and others. In Body Impolitic blog, “Tara,” an obese woman of color writes: Over the last few years, without having lost one of my 275 or so pounds, in some contexts I've stopped being fat… because my hair has gotten gray enough to make me look old. I notice this most on public transit–people who five years ago would have glared at me for seeking out a seat (because I was fat) now get up for me (because I'm old). People who would have really minded sitting next to me, even though the BART seats are plenty big enough for two people my size not to touch each others' hips (because I was fat) now sit down blithely next to me (because I'm old). People who showed clear disdain for me if I was using the escalator instead of the stairs, or holding on to a railing (because I was fat) now show sympathy and patience (because I'm old). In those contexts, age trumps fat, and being old replaces being fat. In the doctor's office, however, I'm still fat. In a cafe or restaurant where all the chairs have arms, I'm fat. On an airplane, I'm still more fat than old, though that one might be changing. If a black woman transitions to being male, she stays black and becomes male. In some contexts, I've stayed fat and also become old, but in others I've ceased to be fat, because I'm old. (Laurie and Debbie's blog) In the next entry, Tara concludes: I literally could not tell my own story as a person without intersectionality. Having found myself on the cusp of and entrenched in a number of different identity categories (for disclosure, those would be: biracial (half-Taiwanese/ Chinese, half-white/Jewish), queer, raised by mixed-class parents (but mostly middle class), high femme, cisgendered, able-bodied, and fat) I have never truly found a
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“home” in any single-politic movement. (Laurie and Debbie's blog)
This narrative seems to trivialize intersectionality, but it also illustrates how intersections travel with cycles of our lives. I have used major fragments of these two entries because they clearly demonstrate that recent developments in social computing technologies, in giving people the tools to join diverse social networks, create niches for “living” intersectionality, for voicing specific forms of “lived experience.” This role of intersectionality should not be overlooked, especially in view of the fact that most scholarly literature on the subject, written in what Patricia Hill Collins describes as postmodern “exclusionary language” with its gatekeeping function, is addressed to pen-colleagues and postgraduate students (1998a, 142). However, these quotations also touch upon a more serious issue. They demonstrate that the openendedness of intersectionality embedded in the “and so on” or “etcetera,” conspicuously and almost unanimously used by scholars at the end of any string of intersections, precisely points not only to intersectionality's plurality but also to its ad infinitum quality. The question then arises: is the “diluted” character of intersectionality a deficit or a strength? There are at least two responses to this. Leslie McCall (2005), whose tri-partite proposition on intersectional methodology will be discussed below, suggests that interest in intersectionality was spurred by a postmodern “critique of gender-based and race-based research for failing to account for lived experience at neglected points of intersection” (1780). But this formulation elicits concerns such as this: by removing altogether the notion of a ‘center,’ that is, a belief in some sort of verifiable, objective knowledge that one can deploy with authority, the rubric of deconstruction disempowers the very same historically marginalized groups who helped create the space for postmodernism to emerge. (Collins, 1998a, p. 145)
For Collins (1998b), intersectionality is only a heuristic device which “references the ability of social phenomena such as race, class, and gender to mutually construct one another,” and she adopts her discrete categories of gender, class, and nation to situate intersectionality in the discussion of (American) family. However, both Collins and McCall agree on methodology, i.e. the importance of studying groups “with each group encountering a distinctive constellation of experiences based on its placement in hierarchical power relations” (Collins, 1998a, p. 205) via self-narratives. Ethnographic research has already been used in multicultural projects (Fischer, in Diane Carson and Lester D. Friedman, 1995), but it has examined groups which shared a common identity marker or markers. Intersectional method, on the other hand, observes the way various identity markers interact in a single subjectivity; therefore, some identity markers may not be shared by all subjects. Consequently, intersectional study of groups across subjective differentials has to account for diversity among group members. It seems fair to say that some identity markers will be shared by all members, and some will not.
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Such methodological issues have been taken into consideration in the work of scholars who have attempted to assign to intersectionality the role of methodology or methodological orientation. I have chosen a “classic” text in this respect. Published in 2005, Leslie McCall in “The Complexity of Intersectionality” wonders why, “despite the emergence of intersectionality as a major paradigm of research in women's studies and elsewhere, there has been little discussion of how to study intersectionality; that is, of its methodology” (1771). In response to her question, she puts forward three methodological perspectives: “anticategorical complexity,” “intracategorical complexity,” and “intercategorical complexity.” “Anticategorical complexity,” argues McCall, aims to deconstruct master categories and narratives that “fraternized on the male side of the modern male/female binary” (p. 1776), as well as to integrate women as subjects of critical analysis. This method encompasses the criticism of multiculturalism with its identity politics to construct group boundaries. Feminist thinkers began by deconstructing these frontiers through the questioning of the absence of women as subjects of research. They subsequently undermined “the very edifice of modern society — its founding philosophies, disciplines and concepts” (McCall, 2005, p. 1776). Significantly, black feminists critiqued also the exclusive nature of early feminist theory as written from the position of whiteness. “Intracategorical complexity” goes further. It contests universalising essentialism in identity politics and approaches inequalities through lived experience at – heretofore – neglected axes of social stratification such as, for instance, the interlocked categories of gender, race, and sexuality. The method works with a single social group methodically untangling the discrete categories of oppression permeating each other or one another. Here, McCall harks back to past records of racial relations in the United States when black women seemed to achieve greater equality with men of their race relative to white women because the conditions of slavery and white supremacy forced them to work on par with black men, yet black women were also more vulnerable to sexual violence because the whites did not consider them worth protecting as women (p. 1780). This opinion becomes even more complex when we consider the fact that black women worked on par with black men outside home, but they were also main caretakers of the family, bore children and saw them sold into slavery. Traditionally, intracategorical method works through narratives, such as slave women's personal records, for instance Jacobs's (1861) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Drumgoold's (1898) A Slave Girl's Story, Burton's (1909) Memories of Childhood Slavery Days, and what we would now call a second-generation memoir, Murray's (1956) Proud Shoes. The Story of an American Family. As McCall defines: “they take as their subject an individual or an individual's experience and extrapolate illustratively to the broader social location embodied by the individual” (1781). Intracategorical complexity characterizes tensions between the first wave of women's movement and the anti-slavery movement in the United States, as Patricia Hill Collins (1998a,b) and Avtar Brah and Ann Phoenix (2004) argue in regard to Sojourner Truth's avant-garde speech “Ain't I a Woman?”: “Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter, I think between the
Negroes of the South and the women of the North – all talking about rights – the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this talking about? That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me any best place. And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm. I have plowed [sic], I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And ain't I a woman? I could work as much, and eat as much as any man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne children and seen most of then sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman?…”. (Brah & Phoenix, 2004, p. 77) The speech predates contemporary concerns with what Ken Plummer termed “intimate citizenship” (Plummer, 2003). In part, Plummer addresses sensitizing concepts which have been circulated recently, such as “outsiders within” (Collins, 1999) or “wanting ones,” a perception neatly captured by Judith Butler (2007, p. 41)2 — with a particular emphasis on story-telling (Oleksy, ed. 2009, pp. 4–5). Sojourner Truth, not a citizen herself, skilfully mixes elements of elegy and protest, and uses her own story to “construct” herself in the slave-owning society. Her “political identity … is never taken as a given but is performed through rhetoric and narration” (Brah & Phoenix, 2004, p. 77). Reliance on narratives also characterizes the third mode of intersectional methodology: “intercategorical complexity” or – rather – “categorical approach,” since McCall (2005, p. 1786) continues using the latter term in this section of her article. The subject of this kind of analysis is a “multigroup, and the method is systematically comparative”. McCall explains: … the type of categorical approach I am developing here goes further in exploring whether meaningful inequalities among groups even exist in the first place. Perhaps inequalities were once large but now they are small, or in one place they are large but in another they are small. (1785) Here, she calls attention to the inherent difficulty of this kind of research methodology. Earlier in her text, when she addresses the intra-categorical complexity, she first gives examples of the previous multicultural research based on identity politics, such as comparisons of “working-class women to working-class men,” “Latina domestic workers to an earlier generation of African American domestic workers,” etc., in order to conclude that “some generalizations about the group must be made. The point is not to deny the importance – both material and discursive – of categories but to focus on the process by which they are produced, experienced, reproduced, and resisted in everyday life.” Since such studies “cannot possibly supersede immediately the expansive terrain of [their] predecessors, [they] advance in some directions but not all” (1783). The subtle line that advances McCall's methodology in this category beyond previous research based on identity politics is what she calls unraveling “one by one the influences of gender, race, class, and so on” and showing how they route through one another.
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Interesting examples of such large projects are carried out within the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity, for instance: “Does Stress ‘Get Under the Skin’ Differently By Social Status?”, “Identifying Essential Bio-Social Pathways for Cardiovascular Disease Morbidity,” “Differences in Risk Factors by Hypertension Status Among Postmenopausal African American and Latino Women” (The Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity). Lykke (2010, p. 68) likewise presents a tri-partite understanding of the history of intersectionality, but she brings up the concept of genealogy, which constructs her book and could facilitate further understanding of the complexity of intersectionality. Lykke puts forward three clusters of feminist analysis of intersections: explicit feminist theorizings of intersectionality, that is, theories that – like Crenshaw's theory – explicitly use the concept “intersectionality”; implicit feminist theorizings of intersectionality, that is, theories that focus on intersections, but without using the concept ‘intersectionality’ as the frame of interpretation; feminist theorizings under other names, that is, theories that concentrate on intersections, but while using other concepts and frames than ‘intersectionality.’ (p. 68) Before Lykke unpacks each of them, she recapitulates Leslie McCall's groupings of anti-categorical, intra-categorical, and inter-categorical intersectional analyses because she fears that McCall's categories might crumple onto hers or be used interchangeably. But there is no such danger since – as Lykke also acknowledges – McCall is not preoccupied with implicit uses of intersectionality and those categorized under other names. McCall's article responds to the dire need for methodology in the field, and it fulfills this requirement. On closer inspection, however, when Lykke discloses her categories, it becomes clear that she follows the same route as McCall does in her proposition. She begins with the presentation of structural intersectionality referencing, among others, Young's (1997) Intersecting Voices in the context of structural vis à vis political intersectionality as well as her concept of “seriality”; i.e. the way in which oppressive structures permeate each other. Young also introduced – reminds Lykke – the concept of a group as a political collective, whose members share a common cause. Lykke then momentarily moves to discuss poststructuralist approaches to intersectionality which can “grasp the construction of subjectivities in discourses that weave together narratives of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, age, and so on” (73) and substantiates this definition with examples of analyses performed by two Danish scholars, Dorte Staunæs and Baukje Prins. Staunæs (2003) investigated a group of male Danish and Turkish schoolchildren with particular emphasis on variability of social life and subjectification processes. In a somewhat similar fashion, Baukje Prins (2006) gathers her material from ethnographic research involving her former primary school cohorts. Prins's and Staunæs's research is carried out within the anti-categorical “camp,” says Lykke, and adds that both articles clearly demonstrate that “McCall's classifications are too crude to
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grasp nuances. Neither Staunæs nor Prins would simply reject categories” (p. 73). Lykke wraps up her analysis of the three modes of theorizing intersectionality with reference to “implicit” forms: the aforementioned speech by Sojourner Truth and another address on gender and class made by Alexandra Kollontai (Aлeкcáндpa Mиxáйлoвнa Кoллoнтáй – née Domontovich, Дoмoнтóвич), a revolutionary Bolshevik (later Menshevik) feminist and Soviet diplomat. Lykke presents Kollontai as a predecessor of “postcolonial and anti-racist feminist critiques of notions of ‘global sisterhood’” and vehement critic of bourgeois Russian women's “feminist identity discourses about an unproblematic unity among women” (77). This formulation is somewhat far-fetched because we first need to answer the question who Alexandra Kollontai was. She was an aristocrat on her father's side of family, spoke several languages, was well-traveled, and visited England, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, and the USA before her involvement with the Bolsheviks. She worked with Lenin and – later – with Stalin. After the October revolution of 1917 she became People's Commisar for Social Welfare. In the USSR, she, a former aristocrat, became the first woman ambassador to Norway, Mexico, and Sweden. There is no question that Kollontai was an advocate of women's rights. But was she an opportunist? Before I answer this question, I would like to make a comparison between two famous feminists, Alexandra Kollontai and bell hooks, who appear on the pages of Lykke's book in dissimilar and – I would argue – disputable contexts. In her chapter on “Shifting Boundaries,” Lykke slashes hooks who “does not find differences between the academically eloquent [author] and the silent majority of poor women whom she speaks about” (p. 169). Lykke quotes two passages from hooks' (1984, 2000) Feminist Theory: From Center to Margin, which I will also – for clarity – cite at length: Feminism in the United States has never emerged from the women who are most victimized by sexist oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spriritually — women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority (p. 1)We resist hegemonic dominance of feminist thought by insisting that it is a theory in the making, that we must necessarily criticize, question, re-examine, and explore new possibilities. My persistent critique has been informed by my status as a member of an oppressed group, my experience of sexist exploitation and discrimination, and the sense that prevailing feminist analysis has not been the force shaping my feminist consciousness. (pp. 10–11) Lykke critiques hooks' standpoint by indicating that “without further reflections, the academically well-educated narrator and the poor women are inscribed in one and the same ‘we’-category, based on a stance in identity politics” (p. 169). I see this criticism as problematic for two reasons. First, Lykke erroneously attributes hooks' views above to the book that was first published in 1984 (she quotes “2000” as the only publication date). When hooks wrote it, feminism had been appropriated by white, middle class women, and
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standpoint theory was in the making. Second, in Feminist Theory hooks critiques the assertion that all women are oppressed, regardless of their social standing. In one of the early expressions of intersectional consciousness, hooks says: This assertion [that all women are oppressed] implies that women share a common lot, that factors like class, race, religion, sexual preference, etc. do not create a diversity of experience that determines the extent to which sexism will be an oppressive force in the lives of individual women. (p. 5)
Bell hooks is wont to create ferment in feminist theory, yet this is much needed in scientific work. But, she is not an opportunist, which Nina Lykke seems to imply. She had every right to speak in the name of poor black women because she had also come from a poor, black, working class, Christian fundamentalist family. However, to the question posed earlier regarding whether or not Alexandra Kollontai was an opportunist, the answer can only be complex. She was consistently, throughout her life, a feminist fighting for women's rights, and she was trapped in politics, which she did not design but had to endure. But she also held high-ranking positions in the party and an oppressive government which was responsible for murdering thousands of people, and she did not even have to witness this because she was a diplomat on missions away from the Soviet Union. Despite our differences of opinion on bell hooks' position in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, I regard Nina Lykke's Feminist Studies: A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology and Writing as an important contribution to the minimal shelf of intersectionality pedagogy. Generally, amongst the wealth of intersectionality scholarship, very little attention has been paid to education. Theoretical books and journal papers are on the reading lists of graduate courses; however, until recently there have been scarce teaching aids addressed to students in undergraduate and graduate classrooms.3 Lykke's book fills in this space. Lykke describes Feminist Studies as “an advanced textbook balancing introductory overviews and cutting-edge reflections on current issues in feminist theory” (p. 3). The book is eclectic with some material previously published, which is dutifully acknowledged in the preface. Even though Lykke devotes only one section of her study to intersectionality, the whole narrative is conducted in a genealogical fashion, as she demonstrates the evolution of critical thought that laid foundations for the theory, methodology, and practice of intersectionality. The book consists of four parts, the first of which is introductory, the second concentrates on intersectionality, the third on feminist methodologies with a focus on academic and creative writing, and the closing part addresses feminist hermeneutics. Since Nina Lykke defines her position in the book as that of a guide, she locates her situatedness through a dialog with herself in the introductory chapter. There, she sketches her academic and intellectual autobiography as that of a scholar of feminist studies which is a “postdisciplinary discipline” (p. 8). Feminist studies, to Lykke, walks on “two legs … [I]t is both integrated into the traditional disciplines and established as an interdisciplinary field of its own” (p. 8).
There are important feats of Lykke's book. She wraps up major intersectional literature produced so far and offers the much awaited classification of categories within multilayered intersectionality research. Locating intersectionality within post-disciplinary feminist studies is a shrewd motion. A review of literature proves that intersectionality defies disciplinary placement, even though it inspires thinking in various disciplines. Also, it certainly “belongs” to feminism; it is a theory, methodology, and policy tool that attends to feminist undertakings. In her recent article, Davis (2008) makes the case for intersectionality as a “success story” (67). She initially asks a question: “How a theory which is so vague could come to be regarded by so many as the cutting edge of contemporary feminist theory” (69)? Having drawn on a concept in philosophy of science, she surmises that – precisely – such aspects as intersectionality's open-endedness, haziness, ambiguity, incompleteness, etc. paradoxically have contributed to its success. This is fully observable in the number of disciplines within which it has been used, its impact on policy making,4 and the enthusiasm it has garnered amongst feminists in the “West”. As Davis writes, [intersectionality] has generated heated theoretical debates throughout the US and Europe, becoming a standard topic in undergraduate courses, graduate seminars and conferences…. Today, it is unimaginable that a women's studies program would only focus on gender. … It is bon ton for women's studies professors to ask their undergraduate and graduate students to reconsider the topics of their research in the light of multiple differences. (68) I find this opinion over-optimistic. It is of course a truism to say that Europe is not homogenous; not even the European Union. But it should be noted that, whereas gender studies institutions and programs flourish in most “old” member states of the EU, they are scarce in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) and rarely offer undergraduate, let alone graduate, studies. Expanding unemployment and progressing demographic decline affect university enrollment figures in CEEC, which translates into young people's decisions to seek degree programs in areas that are more likely to give them jobs in the future. Only non-degree programs on gender issues addressed, for instance, to school teachers attract larger student populations.5 Davis (2008, p. 79) expresses high praise for intersectionality because “it encourages complexity, stimulates creativity, and avoids premature closure, tantalizing feminist scholars to raise new questions and explore uncharted territory”. Even though I share her enthusiasm for this theory, I see that it has found itself at the cross-roads. Despite the fact that intersectionality has been used in countless contexts, in scholarly texts and – playfully – on the internet, its success should be measured in how it impacts legislation. Intersectionality has been designed in this context and for this purpose. Thirty two years after Kimberlé Crenshaw had penned the critical term “intersectionality” in the legal context, and after scholars of different disciplines had been providing countless inequality markers and describing the processes through which they permeate one another,
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legislation still lags behind. In the introduction to a recently published Institutionalizing Intersectionality in Europe (2010), the editors Johanna Kantola and Kevät Nousiainen argue that the European Commission, in its current legislative initiative, has proposed a directive on “multiple discrimination,” instead of “intersectionality,” and thus favored “anti-discrimination policy as opposed to other measures in furthering equality, thereby narrowing down the debate” (p. 456). Similar problems have been reported by law researches in the United States (e.g. Uccellari, 2008, 24–49). The above notwithstanding, there are very few feminist theories that have made such a splendid career among young feminists as intersectionality has. Intersectionality research has been popularized in the academia and beyond. Feminism and intersectonality have been channeled online and made accessible to millions of women. Models of activism in the countries with developed tradition in feminism have changed. Whereas feminists in new European democracies still organize grassroots conferences and meetings, take part in manifestations against homophobia, celebrate the Women's Day on March 8, young women in the West delve into feminism in private, on the net. “Perhaps it [makes] their feminism a less radical and radicalizing choice,” says Rebecca Traister, “but it also [makes] it far more available” (2010, p. 155). Above all, the open-endedness of the concept, along with a possibility to place one's own agency into the picture, as has been shown above, has attracted young women to intersectionality. The thought underlying intersectionality has been a process and lived experience. It looks back to slavery before and after written records and to human trafficking — past and present. Anti-slavery movements, human and equal rights movements have been its trajectories. It also harks back to the questionings of multiculturalism as a theory and methodology. But its real success will be measured in how it will benefit the underprivileged. Will legislators listen to researchers and look into how different axes interlock in a single individual experience? Or will they go for simplified methods? This still remains to be seen. Acknowledgements I am thankful for comments from colleagues who participated in the American Studies Colloquium Series at the University of Warsaw, where I presented a preliminary version of this article. For financial support during the initial work on this article, I thank the European Commission's Erasmus Mundus GEMMA program, which allowed me to spend two months at the University of New Jersey — Rutgers, as well as the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Endnotes 1 In: Two Women: The Poetry of Jeannette Foster and Valerie Taylor (Chicago: Womanpress, 1976). Valerie Taylor was a pen name of Velma Nacella Young (1913–1997), feminist, lesbian novelist, poet, and social worker. For more information see Marcia Gallo, “A Tribute to Valerie Taylor, Lesbian Writer and Revolutionary,” New Politics, vol. XII-2, Winter 2009. 2 Butler says: “Given the complexity and heterogeneity of modes of national belonging, the nation-state can only reiterate its own basis for legitimation by literally producing the nation that serves as the basis for its
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legitimation. … modes of national belonging designated by “the nation” are thoroughly stipulative and criterial: one is not simply dropped from the nation; rather, one is found to be wanting and, so, becomes a “wanting one” through the designation and its implicit and active criteria” (2007, 31). 3 There are numerous articles on policy options in the EU. See, for instance, Kantola, Johanna and Nousiainen, Kevät (2009); Burri, Susanne and Schiek, Dagmar (2009); and Kóczé, Angé (2009). 4 The situation differs in the United States because it is predicted that the universities there will not suffer from demographic decline since the birth rates of African American and Latino populations have been relatively high. 5 See also a book on intersectionality addressed to undergraduate students published in ATHENA Teaching Series, Teaching Intersectionality. Putting Gender at the Centre, ed. Martha Franken et al. (2009).
References Anthias, Floya, & Yuval-Davis, Nira (1983). Contextualizing feminism: Ethnic, gender and class divisions. Feminist Review, 15, 62−75. Brah, Avtar (1996). Cartographies of diaspora, contesting identities. London & New York: Routledge. Brah, Avtar, & Ann, Phoenix (2004). Ain't I a woman? Revisiting intersectionality. Journal of International Women's Studies, 5, 75−86. Brewer, Rose M., Conrad, Cecilia A., & King, Mary C. (2002). the complexities and potential theorizing gender, caste, race, and class. Feminist Economics, 8(2), 3−18. Burri, Susanne, & Schiek, Dagmar (2009). Multiple discrimination in EU law. Opportunities for legal responses to intersectional gender discrimination. European Commission. Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities. Burton, Annie (1909). Memories of childhood slavery days. Boston: Ross Publishing Company. Cole, Elizabeth R. (2009). Intersectionality and research in psychology. American Psychologist, 64(3), 170−180. Collins, Patricia Hill (1998a). Fighting words: Black women and the search for justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 1998. Collins, Patricia Hill (1998b). It's all in the family: Intersections of gender, race, and nation. Hypatia, 13(3), 62−82. Collins, Patricia Hill (1999). Reflections on the outsider within. Journal of Career Development, 26(1), 85−88. Conaghan, Joanne (2007). Intersectionality and UK equality initiatives. South African Journal of Human Rights, 23(2), 317−354. Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics (pp. 139−167). : University of Chicago Legal Forum. Davis, Kathy (2008). Intersectionality as buzzword: A sociology of science perspective on what makes a Feminist Theory successful. Feminist Studies, 9(67), 67−85. DeGraffenreid v. General Motors Assembly Division, St. Louis, 413 F. Supp. 142, 143 [E. D. Mo. 1976] (www.leagle.com/xmlcontentlinks.aspx? gfile=558%20F.2d%20480, accessed July 8, 2010). Dill, Bonnie Thornton, & Zambrana, Ruth Enid (Eds.). (2009). Emerging intersections: Race, class, and gender in theory, policy, and practice. New Brunswick, New Jersey & London: Rutgers University Press. Drumgoold, Kate (1898). A slave girl's story. Brooklyn: The Author. Franken, Martha, Woodward, Allison, Cabó, Anna, & Bagihole, Barbara M. (2009). Teaching intersectionality. Putting gender at the centre. Utrecht: Athena. Grabham, Emily, Cooper, Davina, Krishnadas, Jane, & Herman, Didi (Eds.). (2009). Beyond intersectionality. Law, power and the politics of location. New York: Routledge & Cavendish. Hawkesworth, Mary (2003). Congressional enactments of race-gender: Towards a theory of race-gendered institutions. American Political Science Review, 97(4), 529−550. hooks, bell (1984). Feminist theory. From margin to center. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. hooks, bell (2000). Feminist theory. From margin to center (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Jacobs, Harriet A. (1861). Incidents in the life of a slave girl. Boston: The Author. Kantola, Johanna, & Nousiainen, Kevät (2009). Institutionalizing intersectionality in Europe. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 11(4), 459−477. Kóczé, Angé (with contribution from Raluca Maria Popa). (2009). Missing Intersectionality: Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in Current Research and Policies on Romani Women in Europe. Policy Studies Series. Budapest: Central European University.
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Lewis, Gail (2009). Celebrating intersectionality? Debates on a multi-faceted concept in gender studies: Themes from a conference. European Journal of Women's Studies, 16, 203−210. Lykke, Nina (2010). Feminist studies: A guide to intersectional theory, methodology and writing. New York & London: Routledge. May, Vivian A., & Ferri, Beth A. (2002). “I'm a Wheelchair Girt Now.” Abjection, intersectionality, and subjectivity in atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. Women's Studies Quarterly, 30, 131−150. McCall, Leslie (2005). The complexity of intersectionality. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30(3), 1771−1800. Mossop v. Canada case ([1993] 1 S.C.R. 554). (scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/ en/1993/1993scr1-554/1993scr1-554.html; accessed February 6, 2011). Murray, Pauli (1956). Proud shoes. The story of an American family. New York: Harper & Brothers. Oleksy, Elżbieta (1994). The structure of kinship. Ellen Glasgow and Zora Neale Hurston. In I. Janicka-Świderska (Ed.), Studies in literature and language: In honour of Adela Styczyńska. : Łódź: Łódź University Press 1994. Oleksy, Elżbieta (2005). ‘Women, don't interfere with us; we're fighting for Poland’: Polish mothers and transgressive others. In M. Mikula (Ed.), Women, activism and social change (pp. 179−197). London and New York: Routledge. Oleksy, Elżbieta (2006). The politics of representing gender in contemporary Polish cinema and visual art. In A. Imre (Ed.), East European cinemas (pp. 49–62). Oleksy, Elżbieta (2007). Intricate interdependencies and female buddy movies. In J. Maszewska, & Z. Maszewski (Eds.), Walking on a trail of words. Essays in honor of Agnieszka Salska. : Łódź: Łódź University Press 2007. Plummer, Ken (2003). Intimate citizenship: Private decisions and public dialogues. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Prins, Baukje (2006). Narrative accounts of origins. A blind spot in the intersection approach. European Journal of Women's Studies. Special Issue on Intersectionality, 13(3), 277−290. Spelman, Elizabeth (1988). Inessential woman: Problems of exclusion in feminist thought. Boston: Beacon Press.
Staunæs, Dorte (2003). Where have all the subjects gone? Bringing together the concepts of intersectionality and subjectification. NORA. Nordic Journal of Women's Studies, 11(3), 1−10. Traister, Rebecca (2010). Big girls don't cry: The election that changed everything for American women. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press. Uccellari, Paola (2008). Multiple discrimination: How law can reflect reality. The equal rights review, 24−49. Young, Iris M. (1997). Intersecting voices: Dilemmas of gender, political philosophy, and policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Further Reading Butler, Judith, & Charkravorty Spivak, Gayatri (2007). Who sings the nation state? Language, politics, belonging. London, New York, Calcutta: Seagull. Carson, Diane, & Friedman, Lester D. (1995). Shared differences. multicultural media and practical pedagogy. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Crenshaw, Kimberlé W., & Harris, Luke Ch. (2009). A Primer on Intersectionality Booklet. African American Policy Forum, Vassar College. Poughkeepsie, NY: Columbia Law School http://aapf.org/tool_to_speak_out/ intersectionality-primer/(accessed July 8, 2010). Oleksy, Elżbieta (1997). Cross-discipline and cross-race: Women's bonding in contemporary southern fiction and film. In M. Wilczyński (Ed.), Canons, revisions, supplements in American literature and culture (pp. 262−269). Poznań: Bene Nati Press. Taylor, Valerie (1976). Two women: The poetry of Jeannette Foster and Valerie Taylor. Chicago: Womanpress. The Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity, URL www.crge.umd.edu/ about_us.html accessed December 2, 2010. Laurie and Debbie's blog, URL http://laurietobyedison.com/discuss?p=512 accessed December 12, 2009.