Intersectionality

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Intersectionality

• Lecture 6
• Beyond the Binaries
• COM 490
• Professor Ralina Joseph

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Quick Reminder Definition - binaries

• Binaries have two parts often shown to be
  diametrically opposed and incompatible
• Binaries connotes division, fission, notions of
  exact opposites
• Binaries largely reflect hegemonic ideas that
  come from dominant ideologies, the norm
  binaries often relies upon stereotypes of the
  other (Hall)

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Quick Definition beyond the binaries

• Going beyond the binaries means illustrating
  how social structures, in particular, race,
  gender, and sexuality, are hybrid (or fluid,
  constructed, mixed, and hybrid)
• Going beyond the binaries is anti-hegemonic in
  nature, not the norm, works explicitly against
  stereotypes

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Terms for the day

• Intersectionality
• Feminism
• Identity politics
• Anti-essentialism

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Kimberle Crenshaw

• Law professor at UCLA and Columbia
• Founding member of the Critical Race Theory
  Workshop
• Academic expertise civil rights, black feminist
  legal theory and race and the law
• Over twenty legal and other Critical Race
  scholarly works published and an editor of a
  Critical Race Theory Reader. 
• Uses legal expertise and scholarship to serve as
  organizer and advocate for issues concerning
  black people and women globally.

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Defining intersectionality

• An inclusive theory where we can take account of
  multiple, subordinated subject positions
  including race, gender, class and language
  status.
• a way to articulate the interaction of racism
  and patriarchy (367)
• Accounts for all facets of a woman of colors
  identity.
• SO women of color are not erased from feminist
  and anti-racist movements

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Why do we need intersectionality?

• Women have come together to gain strength in
  numbers recognizing that the political demands
  of millions speak more powerfully than do the
  pleas of a few isolated voices (357). This is
  the process of recognizing as social and
  systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated
  and individual
• Coming together for identity similarities is the
  basis of identity politics, which has been
  affirming for many. However, problem w/ ID
  politics is that it can often elide differences
  or try to pretend that everyone under a certain
  label is the same. Crenshaw argues that for
  women of color in particular this elision creates
  a problem theyre looked at as either women OR
  people of color.

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• Not a new theory and not a totalizing theory, but
  necessary because our identities ARE
  intersectional and shes providing a way to
  articulate that.
• 3 parts in article structural intersectionality,
  political intersectionality, and implications of
  intersectionality with ID politics.

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Heads Together

• In your presentation group, brainstorm a list of
  10 media representations where one would need an
  intersectional approach a la Crenshaw.