Intersectionality

Origins, Contestations, Horizons

Anna Carastathis

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780803296626
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

A 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title 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 Kimberlé 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• 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
• About Anna Carastathis
• Series List