Marxism and Feminism by Shahrzad Mojab

Author:Shahrzad Mojab
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2015-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

9 | INTERSECTIONALITY

Delia D. Aguilar

The place of intersectionality as a key concept or principle in feminist studies is well established at this particular moment. Originally employed to refer to the trilogy of gender, race and class conceived as systems and, later, as a multiplicity of identities, the term has become a catchword, the easy utterance of which tends to presume a commonly shared, agreed-upon understanding. But this is far from the case. Almost twenty-five years after intersectionality was first articulated by critical race scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, discussions and debates devoted to its exploration continue unabated at conferences and in journals, both in the United States and in Europe.1 Much academic energy continues to be expended in its revision, elaboration or questioning, at the same time that attempts to pin down its precise meaning have proved unsuccessful. Its status remains unclear. Is it a theory? A heuristic device? A methodology?

In spite of its lack of coherence and the disparate uses to which it has been put, however, intersectionality has a few relatively invariant features that signal complicity with the conservatism of the historical period. This will be the subject of this chapter. To this end, it will trace the roots and evolution of intersectionality as a conceptual tool. It makes the assumption that only by recognizing the changing socio-political environment accompanying its development – alterations in its meaning, constituent properties and purpose or application – can its mutation in the hands of academic practitioners make sense. A further assumption is that, given intersectionality’s centrality in the field of women’s studies, taking into account shifts in the political climate will also serve to highlight feminism’s trajectory and delineate the deradicalization that contemporary feminism itself has undergone since its inception in the late 1960s. Put more sharply, the reformulations of intersectionality by feminists today merely reflect the corporatization of the academy and its increasing subservience to a neoliberal global regime.

The women’s liberation movement and ‘triple jeopardy’

Although Crenshaw is credited with the introduction of the term ‘intersectionality’ in 1989, its conceptual roots can be traced back to the ‘triple jeopardy’ slogan launched by Third World activists when the women’s liberation movement reached its apex. Historians of the era describe this moment in US history as unparalleled in its exuberance and optimism, when no institution was sacrosanct, everything was subject to interrogation, and the overthrow or at least radical overhaul of the system seemed possible.2 Schooled in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements, women’s liberation activists drew ideas as well as inspiration from the socialist politics of the New Left and from then burgeoning national liberation and independence struggles in the Third World.3 Information about covert intervention and outright military suppression of these struggles by the United States was widely disseminated among movement people. In particular, what feminists learned about US policies regarding Vietnam and later the invasion of Cambodia in Asia, along with overt and covert interventions in Central and Latin America, forced a collective questioning of the humanity of capitalism as a social system.

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