Reconfiguring Intersectionality
Audre Lorde: Differences as more than just a women's issue.
How do we engage with differences?
Differences are not only descriptive but are also hierarchal (better than, everything outside of norm)
Reactions to differences are problematic when building feminist thinking that takes differences into account.
Age as her entry point into feminism.
Krenshaw: questions of legal functions - identifying and fighting against oppressions.
Question of how gender and race work together. Women were working with this for years before Krenshaw put a name to it
Nash - limits of intersectionality (making sense of a specific social reality)
Lugones - how do certain oppressions inform each other - events. Hierarchal dichotomy of western colonial thinking. Intersectionality as more than axis of oppression and more as assemblages.
Interesctionality is how multiple oppressions work simultaneously - gives a framework to see how they work. Interlocking sense of oppressions - no symbolic or temporal, it is simultaneous.
Was less a question of identity, which it is more about now.
To look at how people experience certain social situations in different ways according to their position of oppression - metrics of oppression effect people differently. Not all women are oppressed in the same way - depends on the spaces they inhabit.
In political activism in 60's - criticism of socialist movement included questions of class, but not taking into consideration class, race, geopolitical location, sexuality. Narrative was narrow minded.
There was a push of lived experiences - discrimination works in different ways.
Intersectionality departs from the experience of oppression of black women (gender/race)
Different forms of oppression shape/inform each other (not necessarily enforce, some are in contradiction)
Intersectionality is a reaction to a single issue struggle (focusing on racism) - the subject of that movement is generalised (black men/white women). Society doesn't work in single issues.
Brah, Pheonix: Focus is less on identity and more on systems of oppression and how they effect identity
One cannot be 'intersectional'. If everyone is intersectional, if the political aspect is to reclaim the label of intersectionality, then it become politicised.
Identity politics has a bad reputation - intersectionality exacerbates that. You cannot necessarily tell if an organisation is intersectional based on who leads it - to have an intersectional approach, is it about the identity of the people or is it not. To have a panel that represents all sorts of identities does not guarantee that the analysis is intersectional - that is what is essential. The system of oppression is more important than the identity - it is about coalitions rather than individual experiences. However, it also matters who sits in a space and who they represents.
Limitations of intersectionality:
1. Methodology attached to intersectional - how is research gathered?
The vagueness has led to different technique creates a risk of cumulative conception of identity (layers of identity rather than assemblage). Categories are in our social framework - let's make it better. Solution: practical example of how to work with intersectionality (Brah).
2. Who is intersectional?
Scales of oppression does not fit oppression into the focus. Who is a subject worth studying? The framework comes from race, black people have been excluded. Define your idea of intersectionality
3. The relation between lived experience and categorisation of such
The most oppressed groups, the only knowledge comes from them. Although this is important, it can't be the only reliable source of knowledge. Lived experience cannot be the only source.
4. How do we identify this category?
Axes of oppression (gender/race) - racism is gendered, sexism is racialised. How do we identify categories without making them essentialised? We cannot essentialise the categories we are trying to complexify.
Does intersectionality as a universal framework help us to capture this complexity?... Theory must be located - we must be alert to the spatial and temporal coordinates that suffuse all theorising. When we in the non-west theorise on the basis of our experiences, we rarely assum that these are generalisable everywherer, unlike theory arising in the West. (Nivedita Menon, Economic & Political Weekly, 2015. Vol L No 17, p.44)
Gender politics differs across the world, and that makes it harder to theorise intersectionally.
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Racial profiling - intersectional racism/sexism (differences within the phenomenon)
Care labour - a women's issue traditionally (migrant workers who look after middle class children/elders, who looks after their families?) Where is the problem related to colonialism, capitalism, racism?
Intersectiality is asking the other question - Humanity in Action - Dutchifying intersectionality
Identity politics, systems of oppressions, question of differences (diversity). Diversity, oppression and privilege.
Discontent journal - The Order of things: Politics and Economics of (Public) scholarship in the Netherlands
How can we use an intersectional way of thinking when discussing diversity? Intersectionality as tokenism.
Lorde - differences are not seen as overcomable, but are overcome through flattening. Differences aren't taken into account, but agreements are made to please each person enough.
Audre Lorde: Differences as more than just a women's issue.
How do we engage with differences?
Differences are not only descriptive but are also hierarchal (better than, everything outside of norm)
Reactions to differences are problematic when building feminist thinking that takes differences into account.
Age as her entry point into feminism.
Krenshaw: questions of legal functions - identifying and fighting against oppressions.
Question of how gender and race work together. Women were working with this for years before Krenshaw put a name to it
Nash - limits of intersectionality (making sense of a specific social reality)
Lugones - how do certain oppressions inform each other - events. Hierarchal dichotomy of western colonial thinking. Intersectionality as more than axis of oppression and more as assemblages.
Interesctionality is how multiple oppressions work simultaneously - gives a framework to see how they work. Interlocking sense of oppressions - no symbolic or temporal, it is simultaneous.
Was less a question of identity, which it is more about now.
To look at how people experience certain social situations in different ways according to their position of oppression - metrics of oppression effect people differently. Not all women are oppressed in the same way - depends on the spaces they inhabit.
In political activism in 60's - criticism of socialist movement included questions of class, but not taking into consideration class, race, geopolitical location, sexuality. Narrative was narrow minded.
There was a push of lived experiences - discrimination works in different ways.
Intersectionality departs from the experience of oppression of black women (gender/race)
Different forms of oppression shape/inform each other (not necessarily enforce, some are in contradiction)
Intersectionality is a reaction to a single issue struggle (focusing on racism) - the subject of that movement is generalised (black men/white women). Society doesn't work in single issues.
Brah, Pheonix: Focus is less on identity and more on systems of oppression and how they effect identity
One cannot be 'intersectional'. If everyone is intersectional, if the political aspect is to reclaim the label of intersectionality, then it become politicised.
Identity politics has a bad reputation - intersectionality exacerbates that. You cannot necessarily tell if an organisation is intersectional based on who leads it - to have an intersectional approach, is it about the identity of the people or is it not. To have a panel that represents all sorts of identities does not guarantee that the analysis is intersectional - that is what is essential. The system of oppression is more important than the identity - it is about coalitions rather than individual experiences. However, it also matters who sits in a space and who they represents.
Limitations of intersectionality:
1. Methodology attached to intersectional - how is research gathered?
The vagueness has led to different technique creates a risk of cumulative conception of identity (layers of identity rather than assemblage). Categories are in our social framework - let's make it better. Solution: practical example of how to work with intersectionality (Brah).
2. Who is intersectional?
Scales of oppression does not fit oppression into the focus. Who is a subject worth studying? The framework comes from race, black people have been excluded. Define your idea of intersectionality
3. The relation between lived experience and categorisation of such
The most oppressed groups, the only knowledge comes from them. Although this is important, it can't be the only reliable source of knowledge. Lived experience cannot be the only source.
4. How do we identify this category?
Axes of oppression (gender/race) - racism is gendered, sexism is racialised. How do we identify categories without making them essentialised? We cannot essentialise the categories we are trying to complexify.
Does intersectionality as a universal framework help us to capture this complexity?... Theory must be located - we must be alert to the spatial and temporal coordinates that suffuse all theorising. When we in the non-west theorise on the basis of our experiences, we rarely assum that these are generalisable everywherer, unlike theory arising in the West. (Nivedita Menon, Economic & Political Weekly, 2015. Vol L No 17, p.44)
Gender politics differs across the world, and that makes it harder to theorise intersectionally.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Racial profiling - intersectional racism/sexism (differences within the phenomenon)
Care labour - a women's issue traditionally (migrant workers who look after middle class children/elders, who looks after their families?) Where is the problem related to colonialism, capitalism, racism?
Intersectiality is asking the other question - Humanity in Action - Dutchifying intersectionality
Identity politics, systems of oppressions, question of differences (diversity). Diversity, oppression and privilege.
Discontent journal - The Order of things: Politics and Economics of (Public) scholarship in the Netherlands
How can we use an intersectional way of thinking when discussing diversity? Intersectionality as tokenism.
Lorde - differences are not seen as overcomable, but are overcome through flattening. Differences aren't taken into account, but agreements are made to please each person enough.
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