Intersectionality : origins, contestations, horizons /
Anna Carastathis.
- Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, (c)2016.
- 1 online resource (xxiii, 272 pages).
- Expanding frontiers, interdisciplinary approaches to studies of women, gender, and sexuality .
Includes bibliographies and index.
Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Intersectionality, Black Feminist Thought, and Women-of-Color Organizing; 2. Basements and Intersections; 3. Intersectionality as a Provisional Concept; 4. Critical Engagements with Intersectionality; 5. Identities as Coalitions; 6. Intersectionality and Decolonial Feminism; Conclusion; References; Index.
"Intersectionality intervenes in the field of intersectionality studies: the integrative examination of the effects of racial, gendered, and class power on people's lives. While "intersectionality" circulates as a buzzword, Anna Carastathis joins other critical voices to urge a more careful reading. Challenging the narratives of arrival that surround it, Carastathis argues that intersectionality is a horizon, illuminating ways of thinking that have yet to be realized; consequently, calls to "go beyond" intersectionality are premature. A provisional interpretation of intersectionality can disorient habits of essentialism, categorial purity, and prototypicality and overcome dynamics of segregation and subordination in political movements. Through a close reading of critical race theorist Kimberle Williams Crenshaw's germinal texts, published more than twenty-five years ago, Carastathis urges analytic clarity, contextual rigor, and a politicized, historicized understanding of this widely traveling concept. Intersectionality's roots in social justice movements and critical intellectual projects--specifically Black feminism--must be retraced and synthesized with a decolonial analysis so its radical potential to actualize coalitions can be enacted"-- "Intersectionality critically examines the mainstreaming and institutionalization of this concept, offering a renewed understanding through close readings of some of its generative texts"--