Intersectionality and Its Discontents

• DOI: 10.1353/aq.2017.0006
• Publication Date: 2017-04-02T13:02:39Z
• Authors: Jennifer C. Nash
• Keywords: Intersectionality; Nothing

Intersectionality and Its Discontents Jennifer C. Nash (bio) Intersectionality: Origins, Contestations, Horizons. By Anna Carastathis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. 300pages. $55.00 (cloth). (Key Concepts). Patricia Hill Collins Sirma Bilge. New York: Polity, 256pages. $69.95 $24.95 (paper). Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries. Vivian May. Routledge, 2015. 286pages. $116.00 $37.56 These are anxious times for intersectionality its practitioners. For example, at the “Key This Keyword” panel 2014 American Studies Association conference—where scholars reflected on widely circulating keywords to determine whether they should be salvaged or banished from our collective lexicon—nothing generated more unease than intersectionality. The analytic was immediately declared dead. Moments after a performance fatigue amplified through an exasperated sense that had already delivered what it promised, voiced discomfort with “killing” because do would “kill” black feminism perhaps even women as objects study. room grew quiet prospect symbolically slayed women. As slipped into women, moved dangerous desirable, peril promise, audience been quick kill convinced rescue. “Kill episode reflects one moment in much larger theoretical, pedagogical, political, experiential archive where generates though has become institutionalized, made defining across humanities core program-building initiative women’s studies, theory, method, used social sciences, primary way so-called difference is theorized described.1 Feminist debates around intersectionality—which I term wars—have particularly peculiarly contentious.2 Nearly [End Page 117] everything about disputed: histories origins, methodologies, efficacy, politics, relationship identity central metaphor, juridical orientations, “black woman” feminism.3 At heart these anxiety over feminist theory’s key symbol: woman. theory long imagined woman quintessential location complexity marginality, figure disciplines interdisciplinary project by demanding account gendered racism racialized sexism, advocating transcends preoccupation exclusively gender.4 regularly envisioned paradigmatic stands both (indeed, two collapsed conflated), requires studies reckon her complexity. It intersectionality’s ostensible capacity remedy all ailed provide “political completion,” gives analytical, administrative-programmatic muscle.5 In midst wars, proliferation new scholarly work—including three monographs under review—has emerged. If texts reflect status “buzzword,”6 “citationally ubiquitous”7 dominant field so face significant intellectual challenges faces, including work postintersectionality assemblage.8 Though my own deeply suspicious reduction Jasbir Puar’s theorizing assemblage critique (and sometimes intersectionality), analysis use “tool diversity management” “mantra liberal multiculturalism”9 reveals how institutionalized troubling ways, often operate kind “racial alibi”10 either invocation performed instead actual intersectional labor called precisely critiques. Indeed, Puar offers careful reading “an interest exploring other frames, example assemblage, gets rendered problematic produces WOC [women color] feminists invested genealogies ‘race-traitors.’”11 are...