9

INTERSECTIONALITY

Vivian M. May

Though the late twentieth century marked the emergence of inter-

sectionality in the critical lexicon (specifically by Kimberle Crenshaw
[2000] in her 1989 essay, "D emarginalizing the Intersection of Race
and Sex"), many insights encompassed by the term had been developed
and articulated by women of color for over a century. Beverly Guy-
Sheftall traces nearly two centuries of intersectional theorizing1 by black
women in Words ofFire (see especially her essay, "Evolution" [1995b]).
As Barbara Smith emphasizes, "History verifies that Black women have
rejected doormat status, whether racially or sexually imposed, for cen-
turies" (1983, [Link]). While U.S. black feminist thought is not the only
place where intersectional thought has been developed (e.g., there is a
strong thread of intersectional analysis within L atina feminism(s), and
Indigenous fem inists have long asserted analyses informed by interde-
pendence and interconnection), intersectionality's beginnings in black
feminist theorizing are noteworthy. Unfortunately, this longer history
is often overlooked .
For instance, in the 1830s, Maria Stewart anticipated many aspects
of intersectionality in developing "the beginnings of an analytical
framework within which to understand the lives of black women" and,
at the same time, establishing a "political framework that could prove
useful for challenging many of the oppressive structures confronted by
black women" Qordan-Zachery 2007, 255). As Julia Jordan-Zachery

155
156 VIV IAN M. MAY

underscores, a "liberation framework" has long been central to inter-

sectionality (256), meaning questions concerning positionality, knowl-
edge, and freedom are interconnected and must be considered together. 2
Likewise, as I have previously argued, 3 late nineteenth-century black
feminist educator, intellectual, and activist Anna Julia Cooper devel-
oped intersectional analyses and methods in two major works: her 1892
volume, A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1988), the
first book-length example of black feminist theorizing in the United
States, and her 1925 Sorbonne doctoral thesis, !..:Attitude de la France a
l'igard de l'esclavage pendant la revolution , in which Cooper examines the
transatlantic dynamics of the H aitian and French revolutions.
Unfortunately, this longer history of intersectional thought is not as
widely recognized as it should be in much of the W omen's and Gender
Studies (WGS) literature even though, at the same time, intersectional-
ity h as impacted curricular, pedagogical, methodological, and theoreti-
cal work in the field. As an epistemological approach, intersectionality
offers tools to examine the politics of everyday life (e.g., the lived expe-
riences of privilege and oppression, the i:nplications and structures of
marginalization, and the phenomenological and political meanings of
identity). It is equally pivotal in analyzing social institutions, systems,
and structures. lntersectionality exposes how convention al approaches
to inequality, including feminist, civil rights, and liberal rights models,
tend to: mistakenly rely on single-axis modes of an alysis and redress;
deny or obscure multiplicity or compoundedness; and depend upon the
very systems of privilege they seek to challenge.
While intersectionality's meaning is neither static nor unified, conti-
nuities have emerged over time. lntersectional analyses have been devel-
oped as a means to foreground race as a central factor sh aping gendered
experience, emphasizing that addressing racism is fundamental to femi-
nism and vice versa, and to contest the false universalization of gender
as monolithic, as with the false universalization of race and racialized
experience. lntersectional analyses highlight and address erasures and
silences in historical and political records resulting from false universals.
By starting from the premise that systems of power and lived identities
can be best understood as intertwined and not merely as plural, intersec-
tionality entails alternative notions of subjectivity (A larcon 1990) and
consciousness (Sandoval 2000). Crenshaw's n aming of intersectionality
 I NTERSECTIONALITY 157

is important because the term provides a means to identify longstanding

intellectual and political projects examining the workings of power and
privilege, underscoring the politics oflocation, and refashioning notions
of personhood at work in the body p olitic.
Yet it is also the case that intersectionality h as (and has had) quite
a varied role in WGS. For many, it is analytically, pedagogically, and
politically central. Some view intersectionality as one a mong many
choices in the marketplace of feminist ideas, whereas others see it as an
h istorical stage whose time has passed. Intersectionality has also been
characterized as intang ible under an "impossibility thesis"- i.e., doing
intersectional teaching, theorizing, research, or politics is regarded as
an ideal but not actually achievable. A s Stephanie Shields documents, "In
conventional social and behavioral research, intersectionality frequently
becomes red efined as a methodological challenge. . .. [For instance,]
psychological scientists have typically responded to the question of
intersectionality in one of three ways: excluding the question; deferring
the question; limiting the question" (2008, 305).
The unevenness of intersectionality's uses, approaches, and concep-
tualizations demonstrates WGS' complex terrain. I maintain , however,
that the field's future does not lie in tokenizing intersectionality, treat-
ing it as an obligation, or pushing it aside as an impractical vision or
intellectual relic. A s a result of my time spent researching Anna Julia
Cooper, I h ave become convinced of the need for more nuanced under-
standings of intersectionality: repeatedly, I found that an inadequate
understanding of intersectionality, even in its contemporary iterations,
means that C ooper's innovative ideas and complex analyses are widely
misunderstood . While C ooper articulates how race, gender, class, and
region (and later, n ation) interdepend and cannot be examined as isolat-
able, many of h er contemporaries and later scholars examining her work
could not seem to fully grasp h er arguments-in large part because
Cooper's words and ideas were examined via single-axis frameworks,
either/or models of thought, or measures of rationality that could not
account for multiplicity. The precepts used to interpret Cooper have
often run counter to the ideas she was developing.
An inability to fully understand the philosophical and political
worldview that intersectionality entails is not unique to assessments of
scholars such as C ooper. Intersectional analyses frequently have been
158 V IV IAN M . MAY

received as illogical, lacking, or incomprehensible, as Audre Lorde's

query suggests: "We find ourselves having to repeat and relearn the
same old lessons over and over. ... For instance, how many times has
this all been said before?" (1984, 117). Therefore, intersectionality's
recursiveness should not simply be characterized as recycling as Nash
suggests (2008, 9), because the ongoing need to reiterate points about
how engaging with intersectionality requires a major shift in thinking.
The struggle to comprehend and implement intersectionality is epis-
temologically and politically sig nificant for WGS, and suggests a prob-
lem of understanding that must be accounted for. As Susa n Babbitt
describes it, unpacking a problem of understanding entails first examin-
ing how "dominant expectations"-about rationality, subjectivity, nar-
rative style, or form-tend to "rule out the meaningfulness of important
struggles" and impede their ability to be understood (2001, 298). Some
discourses "are not able to be heard" (300); they seem unimaginable
because of power asymmetries and injustices (308). M oreover, this
implausibility is rarely questioned. Often, "people think they have
understood . .. when they have not in fact understood what most needs
to be understood" (303), so that, any difficulty in understanding (i.e.,
that there is something important that is still not yet understood from
a normative stance) and the fundamental differences in worldview are
thereby put to the side. The alternative way of seeing becomes charac-
terized merely as different or illogical: its meaning is flattened. I would
argue that intersectionality's recursiveness signifies the degree to which
its practices go against the grain of prevailing conceptualizations of per-
son hood, rationality, and liberation politics, even in WGS.

Problems of Understan ding and Nominal Use

To better illustrate how elusive this shift in thinking can be, and because
I am interested in well-intended applications of intersectionality that
fall short, I first turn to two texts that are widely taught in W omen's
and Gender Studies. One is M arilyn Frye's essay, "Oppression"-regu-
larly included across the WGS curriculum because Frye's delineation of
systemic "double-binds" (1983, 2) is useful. A companion text is Alison
Bailey's article, "Privilege," wherein she asks why "students who other-
wise embrace Frye's analysis become reluctant to extend it to cover their
 INTERSECTIONALITY 159

own unearned advantages," suggesting they may not fully "understand

oppression as the product of systematically related barriers and forces
not of one's own making" (1998, 104).4 Both Frye and Bailey seek to
examine gender oppression as interlocking with other systems of oppres-
sion and privilege. As Bailey explains, since "oppression is not a unified
phenomenon," in order "to understand how oppression is experienced
... , it is not necessary for social groups to have fixed boundaries" (106).
Yet despite their important contributions to examining oppression,
and notwithstanding their intent to focus on how gender is interwoven
with race, class, and sexuality, both authors (differently) slip away from
developing the multifaceted analyses they set out to undertake.
For example, Frye concludes her essay with a gender-universal anal-
ysis of patriarchy that posits the divide between men and women as
primary, since, she argues, "men" are never denigrated or oppressed
"as men." Frye explains, "whatever assaults and harassments [a man] is
subject to, being male is not what selects him for victimization; .. . men
are not oppressed as men" (1983, 16). To be taken up, Frye's analysis
requires a form of "pop-bead" logic (Spelman 1988, 136, 186), wherein
the gender "bead" of masculinity can be pulled apart from race, sexual-
ity, social class, and other factors. Masculinity seems, therefore, not to
be impacted by or intersected with disability, race, sexuality, or citizen-
ship status, in an inextricable, dynamic way.
This atomization of multiplicity is also evident in that Frye is confi-
dent, in analyzing the politics of anger or of the smile, that "it is [her]
being a woman that reduces the power of [her] anger to a proof of
[her] insanity" (1983, 16). Perhaps Frye can presume it is her "being a
woman" alone that is causal because she is white, able-bodied, and mid-
dle class-since people who are marked as "different" by means of race,
disability, and social class, for instance, are also often stereotyped as
more irrationally "angry" than are members of privileged groups. Some
women are perceived as "angrier" (or as inappropriately angry) in com-
parison to other women; likewise, some women are expected to show
docility or compliance via smiles or silences to other women because of
intertwined factors of (and asymmetries of power related to) race, class,
sexuality, and ability.
Additionally, Frye's analysis of how women's dependency (4, 7-10) is
derogated (while structurally reinforced) obscures how different forms
160 VIVIAN M . MAY

of gendered dependency are differently derogated because gender is not

isolatable from other facets of identity. Some forms of dependence (het-
eronormative, middle class) are more idealized (e.g., women's depen-
dence on men who are their fathers or husbands for protection and care),
whereas others arc stigmatized as deviant and in need of remediation
(e.g., poor women's dependency on the state via welfare). Both types
of institutionalized dependency can be understood as oppressive, but
differently so; one carries social stigma, the other social approval (even
if, as feminist scholars, we may think it should not). Throughout her
analysis of the workings of oppression, Frye includes reference to (and
seeks to acknowledge) differences among women (of race, class, and
sexuality), yet reverts to statements about women as a general group and
to analyses of gender processes as not only homogenized but also isolat-
able from other factors and processes.
Like Frye, Bailey also falls back at times on gender universals
when referencing group dynamics. She claims "men" are automatically
granted the unearned privileges of protector status, authority, and cred-
ibility, and are therefore more likely to be perceived as better leaders
(1998, 116). Bailey obscures how other aspects of one's person hood (and
of other systems of privilege or oppression) mitigate "men's" author-
ity and credibility. To be a male who is nonwhite, working class, dis-
abled, gay, and/or a noncitizen means one is not automatically perceived
as an authority figure. As Devon Carbado explains in examining his
own unearned privileges as a black, heterosexual male, his "relationship
to patriarchy is ... not the same as for a working class Black male," a
middle-class white male, or a queer male, black or white (1999, 430).
H owever Bailey's return to a gender binary between "women and men"
in her analysis of oppression and privilege obscures such nuances.
Other forms of slippage away from intersectionality are evident in
Bailey's analysis, even as she astutely shows how unearned privileges
and earned advantages are interrelated (e.g., in redlining practices in real
estate) (1998, 109). She also underscores how some earned advantages
are more easily acquired if accompanied by unearned gender, race, class,
able-bodied, or heterosexual privileges, hence the "wildcard " quality of
"additional perks" inherent to unearned dominant group privileges (108,
114- 116). Yet this complex view of the matrices of privilege and oppres-
sion is undermined in Bailey's reference to an Andrew Hacker teaching
 INTERSECTIONALITY 161

exercise she finds "particularly effective . . . to illustrate the extent to

which whites unconsciously understand the wild card character of white
privilege" (114). As Bailey explains, Hacker:

asks his white students to imagine that they will be visited by

an official they have never met. The official informs them that
his organization has made a terrible mistake and that accord-
ing to official records you were to have been born black. Since
this mistake must be rectified immediately, at midnight you
will become black and can expect to live out the rest of your
life-say fifty years-as a black person in America. Since this
is the agency's error, the official explains that you can demand
compensation. Hacker then asks his white students: How much
financial recompense would you request? The figures white stu-
dents give in [Bailey's] classes-usually between 8250,000 to
SSO million-demonstrates the extent to which white privilege
is valued. (114)

Unfortunately, Bailey does not address the exercise's fundamental

assu mptions-e.g., to be black is so negative as to require compensation.
Not only does this exercise reify the notion of blackness as horrifying,
homogenize the experience of "being black," and implicitly require the
emotion of pity (which usually combines with power asymmetries in
poisonous ways) to function cognitively as a teaching moment, it also
implies that black students would need to consent to the horror of their
own being to participate in the exercise. 5 Moreover, Bailey's discussion
of Hacker's exercise ignores positive ways to "be black" in this country:
longstanding cultural traditions, faith practices and theological views,
community practices, and artistic and literary legacies are excluded from
the exercise's parameters. Paradoxically, it reinforces a white imaginary,
one predicated on dominance, to try to teach about (and attempt to
undo) white privilege.
Such slippages away from intersectional analysis are sites of episte-
mological struggle. In other words, the dynamics I have discussed in
Frye's and Bailey's essays are not unique, though they illustrate a wider
set of practices; many important texts used (and useful) for introducing
and teaching key concepts in WGS (such as oppression as a systemic
162 VIVIAN M . MAY

and social factor) simultaneously aim to employ a multiplicative analysis

and to examine compoundedness, yet take up a "pop-bead" approach
instead. Examples of such slippage are equally prevalent in recent
debates concerning intersectionality and research methods where,
unfortunately, researchers often use intersectionality nominally rather
than analytically.
By nominal use, I mean when a study is intersectional in name only,
intersectional primarily at the level of the descriptive, or, even worse,
when intersectionality is simply a "dummy" factor or faddish signpost.
Rather than being employed to guide feminist research, shape theo-
retical questions, develop claims, or interpret data, much research uti-
lizes intersectionality merely for descriptive or demographic factors. As
Shields discusses, "Moving from the description of difference/similarity
to explanation of processes is a challenge .... It is neither an automatic
nor easy step to go from acknowledging linkages among social identities
to explaining those linkages or the processes through which intersecting
identities define and shape one another" (2008, 304). Shields under-
scores that, too frequently, "The end result is to mention the newer view
of difference, but to continue to work in the same way as always" (306).
Catherine Harnois examines similar dynamics in studies that employ
gender universalism to explore "women's relationship with feminism"
across racial groups. She finds that researchers assume this relationship
to be "the same for women of different racial or ethnic groups," and that
"a woman's relationship with feminism can be measured by a particular
set of indicators that themselves do not vary across racial groups" (2005,
810). Several studies exclude "the possibility that particular character-
istics and life experiences might affect women of different racial and
ethnic groups in different ways .. .. [such that] generational differences,
income and educational levels, family forms, and involvement with the
paid labor force might shape women's feminist identities differently,
depending on their race and ethnicity" (810). Differences related to age,
family structure, social class, and sexuality are thereby elided. H arnois
concludes: "Each of these studies includes race only as a dummy vari-
able, and in none of these studies is race allowed to interact with any
other independent variable" (810). Moreover, unstated assumptions
about gender and feminism obscure how predictors for "the salience of
feminism in women's lives" were off target vis-a-vis black women: "self-
 I N TER SECTIO N A LI TY 163

identification," a commonly used measure of feminist identity, turned

out to be an unreliable "indicator of how 'feminist' Black women are"
(819). Likewise, using "attitudinal or ideological variables to measure
the salience of feminism in women's lives is also problematic" because
feminism does not have only one meaning or history (812). 6
Another form of nominal use occurs when researchers try to employ
intersectionality, but do so selectively, such that the research desig n
contradicts ma ny of intersectionality's key ideas.7 In analyzing quali-
tative studies about black lesbians (including h er own previous work),
Lisa Bowleg exposes common errors in identity research. Although
intersectionality highlights how identities are interconnected and can-
not be ranked or isolated, researchers seeking to understand complex
identity tend to rely on interview methods predicated on sing ularity not
compoundedness. Bowleg concludes: if you "ask an additive question,
[you] get an additive answer," in which participants rank or separate
out identities in order to answer research questions (2008, 314). Addi-
tive approaches in research d esign suppress the ability of participants to
discuss and analyze the "interdependence and mutuality of identities"
(316).
Reflecting back on her earlier research, Bowleg remarks: "It is obvi-
ous now in retrospect that a truly intersectional question would simply
ask the respondent to tell about her experience without separating each
identity"; as Bowleg had done when she asked participants the follow-
ing: "what would you say about your life as a black person?; W oman?;
Lesbian?; and Black lesbian woman?" (2008, 315). Similarly, Ange-
M arie H ancock contends: "an intersectional approach would not simply
expand to a typology of discrete racial/ethnic groups within the category.
M ost importantly, intersectional approach es to collecting and analyzing
data would attend to issues of hybridity or multiraciality recognizing
the contingency" of both group a nd individual identity (2007, 73).
M oreover, as Bowleg demonstrates, if the focus is on intersectionality
as relevant primarily to demographics, then key "dimensions of experi-
ence," including "meaningful constructs such as stress, prejudice, [and]
discrimination," are not engaged with by researchers (2008, 316), and
the contexts of lived experience (both micropolitical and macrop oliti-
cal) are positioned as beyond the scope of research (320). Julia Jordan-
Zach ery agrees that leaving out background contexts remains a problem
164 VIVI AN M . MAY

in current intersectionality research, despite intersectionality's focus on

the contextual and the lived. Like Bowleg, Jordan-Zachery critiques the
use of additive models of identity and the reliance on apolitical views
of intersectionality that curtail its potential impact both in term s of
knowledge production and social change. Jordan-Zachery contends that
the implied separation of knowledge from power falsely characteriz es
intersectional analysis as divorced from social transformation , which is
troubling given its roots in liberation politics (2007, 261).
Thus, despite notions that intersectionality is widely (and adequately)
used in WGS scholarship, these examples-illustrating depoliticized
notions of intersectionality, analyses obscuring interaction ac ross (and
the simultaneity of) systems of power, a nd slippages to (falsely) univer-
salized or "pop-bead " notions of identity that suppress the mutual inter-
action of identity categories-suggest otherwise. I am not proposing
one "right" way to read intersectional theories or devise intersectional
methods, nor am I advocating th at the field have a sing ular or "core" set
of principles revolving around intersectionality (especially as intersec-
tionality questions universaliz ing impulses). My concern is that inter-
sectionality is being tokenized , evaded, or characterized as outmoded
before its full impact has unfolded. I am also troubled by ahistorical
interpretations and acontextual uses of intersectionality, and find myself
asking : why does it seem that intellectual innovations (such as intersec-
tionality) devised in large part by women of color continue to be treated
casually?8 Why are the intellectual histories behind such theoretical
innovations (or interventions) regularly bracketed or ignored ?

A Snapshot oflntersectionality

Rather than assume "everyone understands intersectionality," I want to

pause to summariz e some of its central insights. lntersectionality calls
for analytic methods, modes of political action , and ways of think-
ing about persons, rights, and liberation informed by multiplicity. It is
both metaphorical and material, in that it seeks to capture something
not adequately named about the nature of lived experie nce and about
systems of oppression. lntersectionality adds nua nce to u nderstand-
ing d ifferent sites of feminism(s) a nd the multiple dimensions of lived
experience, it lends insight into the interrelationships among struggles
 INTERSECTIONALITY 165

for liberation, and, as Maparyan indicates elsewhere in this volume, it

shifts what "counts" as a feminist issue and what is included as gendered
experience. lntersectionality offers a vision of future possibilities that
can be more fully realized once a shift toward the multiple takes place.
Its critical practices include:
• Considering lived experience as a criterion of meaning: Intersec-
tionality focuses on how lived experience can be drawn upon
to expose the partiality of normative modes of knowing (often
deemed neutral) and to help marginalized groups articulate and
develop alternative analyses and modes of oppositional con-
sciousness, both individually and collectively.9
• Reconceptualizing marginality and focusing on the politics of loca-
tion: lntersectionality considers marginalization in terms of
social structure and lived experience and redefines "marginality
as a potential source of strength," not merely "tragedy" (Col-
lins 1998, 128). Lugones and Price insist that the marginalized,
"create a sense of ourselves as historical subjects, not exhausted
by intermeshed oppressions" (2003, 331). While hooks char-
acterizes the margins as a "site of radical possibility, a space of
resistance" (1990, 149), Lugones describes marginality as a site
of the "resistant oppressed" wherein "you have ways of living
in disruption of domination" (2006, 78, 79). Methodologically,
attending to the politics of location entails accounting for the
contexts of knowledge production (Bowleg 2008, 318; Jordan-
Zachery 2007, 259) and thinking about the relevance of the
knower to the known-factors usually considered outside the
realm of knowledge "proper." 10
• Employing "both/and" thinking and centering multiracial femi-
nist theorizing: Moving away from "dichotomized" thought
(Lugones 1990, 80) and "monolithic" analyses of identity, cul-
ture, and theory (Christian 1990a, 341), intersectionality theo-
rizes from a position of "simultaneity" (Nash 2008, 2; V. Smith
1998, xv).11 Bridging the theoretical and empirical (McCall
2005, 1780), a nd using "double vision" (Lugones 2006, 79),
intersectionality "refers to both a normative theoretical argu-
ment and an approach to conducting empirical research that
166 VIVIAN M. MAY

emphasizes the interaction of categories" (H ancock 2007, 63).

While it is not merely the descriptive for which intersectionality
was developed, it is often reduced to this. 12 As Shields explains:
"Most behavioral science research that focuses on intersection-
ality ... employs [it] as a perspective on research rather than as a
theory that drives the research question .... [Intersectionality's]
emergent properties and processes escape attention" (2008 ,
304).
• Shifting toward an understanding of complex subjectivity: Along-
side an epistemological shift toward simultaneity and both/
and reasoning is a shift toward subjectivity that accounts for
"compou ndedness" (Crenshaw 2000, 217); critiques of uni-
tary knowledge and the unitary subject are linked (M cCall
2005, 1776). Rather than approach multiple facets of identity
as "non-interactive" and "independent" (H arnois 2005, 810),
an interscctional approach focuses on indivisibility, a "complex
ontology" (Phoenix and Pattynama 2006, 187) conceptualized
as woven (Alarcon 1990, 366), kneaded (Anzaldua 1990e, 380),
and shifting (Valentine 2007, 15). This approach "denies any
one perspective as the only answer, but instead posits a shift-
ing tactical and strategic subjectivity that h as the capacity to
re-center depending upon the forms of oppression to be con-
fronted " (Sandoval 2000, 67).
• Analyzing systems of oppression as operating in a "matrix": Con-
nected to complex subjectivity are analyses of domination that
account for relationships among forms of oppression . As Pauli
Murray aptly put it, "The lesson of history that all human rights
arc indivisible and that the failure to adhere to this principle
jeopardizes the rights of all is particularly applicable" (1995,
197). The Combahee River Collective insists on "the develop-
ment of an integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact
that the major systems of oppression arc interlocking" (1983,
261). l'l A "single axis" approach "distorts" and "theoretically
erases" differences within and between g roups (Crenshaw 2000,
209-17); multiple systems of power must therefore be addressed
simultaneously.
 INTERSECTIONALITY 167

• Conceiving of solidarity or coalition without relying on homogene-

ity: Rather than sameness as a foundation for alliance, Lorde
attests, "You do not have to be me in order for us to fight along-
side each other" (1984, 142). 14 Intersectionality pursues "'soli-
darity' through different political formations and ... alternative
theories of the subject of consciousness" (Alarcon 1990, 364).
Mohanty advocates thinking about feminist solidarity in terms
of mutuality, accountability, and the recognition of common
interests as the basis for relationships among diverse com-
munities. Rather than assuming an enforced commonality of
oppression, the practice of solidarity foregrounds communities
of people who have chosen to work and fight together.... [It]
is always an achievement, the result of active struggle (2003,
78). This requires acknowledging that marginalization does not
mean "we" should "naturally" be able to work together. Lugones
urges us to "craft coalitional gestures" both communicatively
and politically, since there is no guarantee of "transparency"
between us, even margin to margin (2006, 80, 83).
• Challenging false universals and highlighting omissions built into
the social order and intellectual practices: lntersectionality exposes
how the experiences of some are often universalized to rep-
resent the experiences, needs, and claims of all group mem-
bers. Rather than conceptualize group identity via a common
denominator framework that subsumes within-group differ-
ences, creates r igid distinctions between groups, and leads to
distorted analyses of discrimination, intersectionality explores
the politics of the unimaginable, the invisible, and the silenced.
lntersectionality understands exclusions and gaps as meaning-
ful and examines the theoretical and political impact of such
absences. 15
• Exploring the implications ofsimultaneous privilege and oppression:
In addition to focusing on the "relational nature of dominance
and subordination" (Zinn and Dill 1996, 327) 16 and breaking
open false universals, intersectionality focuses on how person-
hood can be structured on internalized hierarchies or "arro-
gant perception" (Lugones 1990); thus "one may also 'become
168 VIVIAN M . MAY

a woman' in opposition to other women" not just in opposition

to "men" (Alarcon 1990, 360).17 Normative ideas about identity
categories as homogenous "limit[s] inquiry to the experiences
of otherwise-privileged members of the group," and "ma rginal-
izes those who are multiply-burdened and obscures claims that
cannot be understood as resulting from discrete sources of dis-
crimination" (Crenshaw 2000, 209). Intersectionality seeks to
shift the logics of how we understand domination, subordina-
tion, personhood, and rights.
• Identifying how a liberatory strategy may depend on hierarchy or
reify privilege to operate: Intcrsectionality offers tools for seeing
how we often uphold the very forms of oppression that we seek
to dismantle. 18 For instance, Crenshaw identifies how the cou rt's
normative view of race and sex discrimination means that the
very legal frameworks meant to address inequality require acer-
tain degree of privilege to function (2000, 213). She lays ba re
the court's "refusal to acknowledge compound d iscrimination"
(214) and highlights the problem Lugones characterizes as a
collusion with divide and conquer thinking (2006, 76).

Conclusion: lntersectionality and Women's and

Gender Studies' Future

Ubiquitous reference to intersectionality in W omen's and Gender Stud-

ies curriculum and scholarship suggests the field has shifted fully to
the multidimensional ways of thinking about gender and systems of
oppression that arc key to intersectional thinking-e.g., that gender
is inherently interwoven with the politics, structures, and epistemolo-
gies of race, sexuality, social class, disability, and nation. The cu rrent
literature includes soaring rhetoric about intcrsectionality and WGS.
For instance, Kathy Davis asserts: "At this particular juncture in gen-
der studies, a ny scholar who neglects difference runs the risk of hav-
ing her work viewed as theoretically misguided, politically irrelevant,
or simply fantastica l" (2008, 68). Yet, I m aintain that one could: (1)
readily find well-regarded venues for WGS scholarsh ip that do not ade-
quately attend to or take up "difference"; and (2) that it would be seen
as good work by many rather than dismissed outright as "misguided"
 INTERSECTIONALITY 169

or "irrelevant," much less "fantastical." Despite widespread reference

ro intersectionality in WGS scholarship, it is often employed cursorily.
One tendency is to posit intersectionality as something scholars should
acknowledge (i.e., an obligation), but a contextualized understanding of
the concept is not requisite. Alternatively, intersectionality can be seen
as positive but unrealistic-to be achieved in the future, but at present
impossible. Thus, even laudatory reference to intersectionality can be
fleeting or superficial, which underscores how far the field has to go
to fulfill much of intersectionality's pedagogical, analytical, theoretical,
and political promise.
W e must ask some difficult questions. Do nods to intersectionality
in WGS provide a "conceptual warrant" to avoid, if not suppress,
multiplicity? Has intersectionality's critical lexicon, forged in strug-
gle, been co- opted and flattened rather than engaged with as an
epistemological and political lens? We must address the common notion
that "everyone" already "does" intersectionality; even if one agrees, for
the sake of argument, that "we" all "do" intersectional work, the question
remains, how? Does intersectionality shape research, pedagogy, or
curriculum structure from the start, or is it tacked on or tokenized?
How does intersectionality translate into methodology, be it qualitative,
quantitative, literary, or philosophical? I s it reduced to a descriptive tool
or conceptualized as impossible? Do its key insights slip away, even in
well-intended applications? Statements about intersectionality's having
"arrived" beg the question Collins raises when she wonders whether it
is being adopted primarily as the latest "overarching" terminology to
explain both the matrices of identity and of systems of oppression, but in
a way that obscures complexities. She writes: "If we are not careful, the
term 'intersectionality' runs the ... risk of trying to explain everything
yet ending up saying nothing" (2008, 72).
Finally, as Laura Parisi also argues in this volume, it is important to
consider whether an evasion of intersectionality can occur by focusing
on the transnational. Attending to global feminisms, theorizing
transnational politics, and forging comparative practices is pivotal to
WGS given the complex flows of global capital, the porosity of borders,
and the dangers of "reified nationalisms" (Giddings 2006, v), yet there
are cautionary tales; a shift toward the global can frequently take place
alongside a sanctioned historical amnesia about localized imbrications
170 VIVIAN M . MAY

of race and gender. As Karla H olloway notes, "U.S. feminist stud ies goes
looking for tran snational bodies while local body-politics are unde r-
intcrrogatcd" (2006, 1). Not only do domestic politics of race risk being
displaced onto the politics of global gender "elsewhere," but whiteness
itself as "an embodied and gendered politic is effectively disappeared
from the interrogative terrain as feminism's focus on colored bodies goes
global" (3). Holloway reiterates: "Although race matters and evidence
of ethnicity seem to occupy our academic and political projects, Black
folks themselves disappear from view and white folk arc protected from
analysis .... In transnational paradigms, local bodies seem not to interest
U.S. women's studies" (14). H olloway suggests that an age-old racialized
gender politics of U.S. wh ire nationalism seems operative in some of the
recent turns to globalization in WGS; this "new" nationalism (in the
name of transnationali sm) turn s on an economy of fear and plays our
in the public domain via narratives of danger on the one hand, and the
idealization of white womanhood o n the other.
Thus, A lexander and M ohanty's question remains pivotal to thinking
th rough the future implications and past iterations of both transnational
and intcrscctional frames: "What kinds of racializcd, gendered selves get
produced at the conjuncture of the transnational and the nco-colonial?"
(2001, 496). As Obioma Nnaemeka points out:

Theorizing in a cross-cultural context is fraught with intellec-

tual, political, and ethical questions: the question of provenance
(where is the theory coming from?); the question of subjectivity
(who authorizes?); the question of positionality (which specific
locations and standing [social, political, and intellectual] docs
it legitimize?). The imperial nature of theory formation must be
interrogated. (2003, 362)

I am calling, then, for a continued focus on intersectionality, but not

because intersectionality shou ld become the global theory; however, its
insights and analyses need not be elided in work that seeks to account
more fully for the politics of nation, global flows of power and knowl-
edge, and questions of the neocolonial. At its best, transnational femi-
nist work and intcrsectional analyses account for multiply constituted
subjects and interacting systems of power and inequality, globally and
 INTERSECTIONALITY 171

locally. Transnational feminist theorizing and alliance building will

only be strengthened by deep engagement with intersectionality and
vice versa. However, to engage with intersectional and transnational
analyses simultaneously and adequately, the field must contend with the
ways in which each of these political and theoretical turns is too often
undertheorized or even resisted outright in much of the work done in
the name of Women's and Gender Studies.

Notes
1. Guy-Sheftall traces the historical trajectory of intersectional black femi-
nist thought as an approac h and analytical framework even though the
term "intersectionality" was no t necessarily in use.
2. Connections betwee n liberation politics and the politics of location are
explored in several pivotal works, including: Anzaldua 1990; Cade 1970;
Hull, Scott, and B. Smith 1982; M ohanty, Russo, and Torres 1991; and
M oraga and Anzaldua 1983.
3. See May 2007 and 2009.
4. Ringrose (2007) focuses on how structures of power arc intangible for
those systemically advantaged by such systems. Since discourses of choice
and agency cloud students' ability to analyze systemic and simultaneous
privilege and oppression in their own lives and in the la rger social world,
a focus on intentionality and choice is inadequate without examining how
structu ral determin ants bea r upon people's lives.
5. My analysis is info rmed by Patricia Williams' essay, "The D eath of the
Profane," which examines "color-blind " legal writing and ostensibly
color-blind policies and practices, including the use of buzze rs in ew
Yo rk boutiques. Willia ms argues: "the repeated public urg ings that blacks
understand the buzzer system by putting themselves in shoes of white
storeowners" works on an economy of violence and "exclusionary hatred"
because it requires that "blacks look into the mirror of frightened white
faces for the reality of their undesirability" (1991, 46).
6. See Maparyan's essay on "Femi nism," in this volume, for more discussion
on feminism's variability.
7. Ringrose contends that intersectionality is "being used in feminist edu-
cational spaces in ways that water down the approach and that relativize,
individualize, and liberalize issues of oppression and power" (2007, 265),
paradoxically favoring meritocracy. Her analysis offers insight w ith regard
to how resea rch designs aimed at employing intersectionality can, analo-
gously, fall short.
8. Sec Morgensen, in this volume, for more on the ways in which Women's
and Gender Studies has failed to follow through on the theorizing of
women of color feminisms.
172 VIVIAN M. MAY

9. Sec Anzaldua 1999; Christian 1990; Collins 1990; Crenshaw 2000; Com-
bahee 1983; Guy-Shcftall 1995b.
10. See Anzaldua 1999; Zinn and Dill 1996, 328; Lugones 2006, 76-78; San-
doval 2000, 86.
11. See Anzaldua 1990b, 145 and 1990e, 378; Henderson 1989, 117; Phoenix
and Pattynama 2006, 187; Sandoval 2000, 88; Yuval-Davis 2007.
12. See Bowleg 2008, 316-18; H ancock 2007, 66; I larnois 2005, 813; Jordan-
Zachery 2007, 261.
13. See Beale 1970, 92-93; Coll ins 2008, 72 and 2004, 95-96; Jordan-Zach-
ery 2007, 259; King 1988; Lemons 2001, 87; Lorde 1984, 140; B. Smith
1983, xxxii-xxviii; Zinn and Dill 1996, 237.
14. Sec Alarcon 1990, 366; Lemons 2001, 87; B. Smith 1983, xliii.
15. See Alarcon 1990, 356; Bowleg 2008, 312; Crenshaw 2000, 223; A. Davis
1984; DuCille 2001, 254; I Ienderson 1989, 117; Jordan-Zachery 2007,
254; Ri ngrose 2007, 267; Sandoval 2000, 75-76.
16. See Anzaldua 1990d, xix; and Minh-ha 1990, 375.
17. Sec Crenshaw 2000, 209-13; Lorde 1984, 67, 132; Cole 2008, 446; Lem-
ons 2001, 86-87; Marable 2001, 124; Neal 1995.
18. See Alarcon 1990; Anzaldua 1990d and 1990c; McCall 2005; Murray
1995; Nnacmeka 2003.
Rethinking Women's
and Gender Studies

Edited by

Catherine M. Orr
Beloit College

Ann Braithwaite
University of Prince E dward Island

Diane Lichtenstein
Beloit College
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 CONTENTS

P REFACE XI II

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS xv
INTRODUCTION WH Y R ETHI NK W OMEN 'S AND G ENDER STU DIES 1
CAT HERIN E M. ORR, ANN BRA ITllWAITE , A D
DIANE LIC HT E STEIN

PART 1 fOUNOATIONAL ASSUMPTIONS 15

CHAPTER 1 FEMIN ISM 17

LAYLI MAPARYA N
What's important is not feminism or Women's and Gender
Studies per se, but rather the transformative, liberatory impulse
for which feminism and Women's and Gender Studies are two
of many vehicles.

CH APTER 2 INTERDISCIPLINARITY 34
DI A E LI CHTENST EI N
Interdisciplinarity provides a way for Women's and Gender
Studies t o use the privileges of institutionalization while
maintaining a defensive distance from that institutionalization.

CH APTER 3 M ETHODS 65
KATHERI E SIDE
M ethods in Women's and Gender Studies/unction
simultaneously as everything and nothing: everything that
other discipline specific methods are not, and nothing because
Women's and Gender Studies claims no specific method as its "own."

VII
VIII CONTENTS

CHAPTER 4 P EDAGOGY 65
SUSAN:>:E LUlli\IANN
What ifstudents claim to have been tra11sformed {or "personally
empowered as women") by a Wome11's and Gender Studies class
that was neither about empowerment 11or women?

P OINTS TO PONDER 82

PART 2 UBIQUITOUS DESCRIPTIONS 83

C HAPTER 5 A CTIVISM 85
CAT H ER INE l\I. ORR
This ill-defined, endlessly-elastic term is used in pu11itive
ways to chastise t he Women's and Gender Studies practitioners
whose scholarly projects or theoret ical orientations stray too far
from the pract ical-and thereby political-applicatio11s that
activism is said t o represent.

CHAPTER 6 WAVES 102

AST RID ll ENRY

The waves metaphor is both descriptive a11d prescriptive,

simultaneously offering a representation offeminism's history
and constraining our imaginatio11 ofthat history.

CH APTER 7 BESIEGEMENT 119

ALISON PIE Pi\I EIER
Within a besiege111e11t mentality, an insistence on ideological
purity makes sense: every compromise seems a concession, one
sup closer to letting the walls crumble and the enemy i11.

CH APTER 8 C OMM UNITY 135

l\ IART l lA McCAUG IIEY
Neither a Women's and Gender Studies community 11or a
comm1111ity of women who;, presumably/reed by Women's
and Gender Studies work rnn be sustained, polit ically or
intellectually, when in our field we have so successfully dispelled
the notion ofa common hi>lory.

P OINTS TO P ONDER 152

 CONTEN TS IX

PART 3 EPISTEMOLOGIES RETHOUGHT 153

CHAPTER 9 I NTERSECTIONALITY 155

VIVTAN M . MAY

Intersectionality's recursiveness signifies the degree t o which its

practices go against the grain ofprevailing conceptualizations
ofpersonhood, rationality, and liberation politics, even in
Wom en's and Gender Studies.

C HAPTER 10 I DENTITY (POLITICS) 173

SCOTT LAURIA MORGENSEN

Interventions by crit ical race, I ndigenous, and transnational

feminisms locate Women's and Gender Studies as a potentially
crucial site for theorizing identities and politics within the
power relations ofa colonial and globalized world.

C HAPTER 11 Q UEER 189

JENN I FER PURVI S

Wo men's and Gender Studies is always already queer.

P OINTS TO P ONDER 206

PART 4 SILENCES ANO DISAVOWALS 207

CHAPTER 12 D ISCIPLINE 209

A N BRA ! TI IWAITE

It is time for Women's and Gender Studies to embark on the

project ofarticulating what makes it not simply the same as the
sum ofacademic feminisms.

CHAPTER 13 H ISTORY 225

WENDY KOLMAR

To pay 110 attention to history in our work, to omit history

from the curriculum, or to settle for familiar, or obfuscating
metaphors and narratives ofhistory is to deny us all usable pasts.
x CONTENTS

C HAPRER 14 SECULARITY 240

KARLYN CROWLEY
Is it possible that Women's and Gender Studies can ever be
truly mult iracial and anti-white supremacist w ithout, at the
minimum, recognizing spiritual and religious discourse?

CH APTER 15 S EXUALITY 258

MERRI LISAJOH1 SON
Th e work ofcompiling a critical genealogy ofpathbreaking,
polyvocal, restorative, even honey-mad discourses ofsexuality
in Women's and Gender Studies is urgent, necessary, and delightful.

POINTS TO P ONDER 274

PART5 ESTABLISHMENT CHALLENGES 275

CHAPTER 16 T RANS- 277

BOBBY NOBLE
Critical trans- perspectives challenge truth claims about the
universalizability of "women" as well as the reduction of
"woman " to the female body or to white women's universalized
experiences.

C HAPTER 17 INSTITUTIONALIZATION 293

AIMEE CARRIL LO ROWE
White women and women ofcolor become unevenly empowered
within the academy by virtue oftheir differentiated capacity,
or desire, to register as "woman" within their encounters with
whit e men.

CH APTER 18 T RANSNATIONAL 310

LAU RA PA RI SI
Is Women's and Gender Studies rep roducing and supporting
hegemonic and imperialist notions of Western citizenship
through the internat ionalization of its curriculum?

P OINTS TO PONDER 328

 CONTENTS XI

C ONCLUSION C ONTI NUING THE C ONVERSATI ON 339

CATH ERINE ~I. ORR, ANN BRA !Tl ! WA !TE , A ' D
DIANE LICHTENSTE IN

WEB R ESOURCES 333

R EFERENCES 339
A BOUT TH E C ONTRIBUTORS 366
SU BJECT I NDEX 371