Intersectionality

Intersectionality intervenes in the field of intersectionality studies

The integrative examination of the effects of racial, gendered, and class power on peoples lives.

While intersectionality tends to circulate merely as a buzzword, Anna Carastathis joins other critical voices in urging 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, categorical purity, and prototypicality and overcome dynamics of segregation and subordination in political movements.

Through a close reading of critical race theorist Kimberl Williams Crenshaws germinal texts, published more than twenty-five years ago, Carastathis urges analytic clarity, contextual rigor, and a politicized, historicized understanding of this pervasive concept.

Intersectionalitys roots in social justice movements and critical intellectual projects—specifically black feminism—must be retraced and synthesized with a decolonial analysis so that its potential to actualize coalitions can be enacted.