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Intersctionality

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12 views3 pages

Intersctionality

Uploaded by

typaldaki78
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Is she a Black Woman or a Woman Who Is Black ?

The heroine of Assembly and

Intersectionality.

Intersectionality in literary studies refers to the examination of how various social

categories (for instance, race, gender, class, sexuality, ability and others) intersect,

namely pass or lie across each other, to shape individuals' experiences and identities

in literary texts. This analytical framework was originally developed by legal scholar

Kimberlé Crenshaw in her now seminal article ‘Mapping the Margins:

Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’ Stanford

Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. Her work has been widely adopted across disciplines,

including literary studies, to understand the complexities of power dynamics and

social hierarchies, when multiple marginalized identities intersect with each other.

The very concept of intersectionality comprises of a cluster of theoretical positions

seeking to problematise the view that identity categories, and the web of social

relations in which they are located, are experienced as ‘separate roads’ (Roth, 2004).

The origin of the concept of intersectionality provenance of the concept may be traced

to a particular black feminist critique of the ways in which mainstream, that is White,

feminism had historically ignored the intersections of race and patriarchy (hooks,

1984; Crenshaw, 1988, 1991). Thus, intersectionality has led feminist researchers to

explore how their ‘moral positions as survivors of one expression of systemic

violence become eroded in the absence of accepting responsibility of other

expressions of systemic violence’ (Collins, 2000: 247).

Crenshaw’s contribution distinguishes between what she terms

structural and political intersectionality. Structural inequality focuses on

the direct impact of inequalities and their intersections as experienced


by individuals in society. Political intersectionality focuses on the

relevance of the impact of inequalities and their intersections to political

strategies. The female protagonist is a black woman, and thus she forms part of two

marginalised groups, namely black and female. Compared to the discrimination faced

by individuals that hold one marginalised identity (i.e. white women or black men),

she experiences double discrimination – sexism and racism. Intersectionality-based

reading of Assembly

Many UK organisations are replete with studies on ‘diversity’, but is limited to

gender, without examining the intersection of race and gender. When they aspire or

attain leadership roles, the barriers and challenges include gender/racial stereotypes,

microaggressions, and bias.

(Close the Gap, 2019).

positioning of black women but also as a means of liberating these women

and their communities. oppressive structures of race, gender, and class in

the lives

of these women. She is not marginalized .

Diversity as a commodity

The right sort of diversity. Marxist reading.

black

womanhood in the policymaking process.

Crenshaw (1991, 1245) employed

“interlocking” or “intersection” to highlight how different forms of

oppression, race and gender “converge.” This was an alternative to the

view that looks at how multiple forms of oppression modify one another.
I also encourage us to be interdisciplinary in our

study of intersectionality.

On the surface, it would appear that any work

involving intersectionality, since it is a challenge to existing power

structures, is inherently an act of liberation. Research that simply

describes how marginalized groups operate or function in the face of

their oppression can be helpful in the formulation of a political

framework of liberation. However, when such research stands alone, it is

not designed to liberate marginalized groups

By not specifying particular social identity structures, these newer definitions expand the

concept of intersectionality beyond race, class, and gender to include age, attractiveness,

body type, caste, citizenship, education, ethnicity, height and weight assessments,

immigration status, income, marital status, mental health status, nationality, occupation,

physical ability, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and other naturalized

—though not necessarily natural—ways of categorizing human populations. This expansion

of the definitional scope of intersectionality to include all social identity structures means

that everyone's unique social advantages and disadvantages should be subject to scrutiny.

Moreover, “everyone” entails not only the multiplicatively oppressed (e.g., African American,

disabled, and homosexual women), but also the multiplicatively privileged—for example,

“[the] white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure” (Lorde [1984]

2007, p. 116).

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