Postmodern origins of intersectionality

Ross Wolfe Writer, critic, translator

THE CHARNEL HOUSE - Feb. 2, 2014

In a three-part series of posts, I’ll try to sketch the conceptual genealogy of intersectionality as a mode of postmodern discourse, politically not far removed from the “politics of difference” or “politics of recognition” characteristic of this period (1980s-2000s). At the same time, I’ll be relating it to concurrent historical transformations taking place within leftist politics. Though social, economic, and political transformations might not straightforwardly determine transformations in other spheres, on a one-to-one basis at least, I nevertheless consider it decisive in the reconfiguration of other ideologies around it. Postmodernism itself is (was?) more or less a symptom of the failure of Marxism to overcome the capitalist social formation in the twentieth century. So “intersectionality,” which I consider to be a botched or bowdlerized attempt to articulate a postmodern political practice — this never having been Crenshaw’s intent, incidentally, since for her it was meant for juridical use — would itself be a further vulgarization of theoretical postmodernism. A subsequent post will attempt to formulate a more rigorous political critique of the concept, thus properly situated, drawing upon the critical social theory of Adolph Reed, the Marxist feminism of Eve Campbell, and the literary criticism of Elif Batuman, as well as other authors who’ve recently written on the subject (Maya Gonzalez of Endnotes, for example). Then after that, in a third post I’ll try to outline the only standpoint from which to grasp the complexities of race, gender, class, and so on without falling into reductionism on the one hand or nebulous, tangled confusions like “intersectionality”: namely, the totality of social relations. Without further ado then, let’s proceed.

READ MORE....