Quotes From Intersectionality Scholarship: Dhamoon, 2011
Another scholar who has been published in the intersectionality field is Dr. Rita Kaur Dhamoon. In her 2011 academic paper, *Considerations in Mainstreaming Intersectionality, she identifies 5 key areas to consider when bringing intersectionality into mainstream usage.
[Image Description: A blue river is shown running lengthwise through the middle of the image. A road is on either side, with a concrete bridge spanning the middle.]
As in my previous “Quotes From Intersectionality Scholarship” offering, which featured Crenshaw’s 1991 paper, I’ll refrain from offering my own commentary. The point is to offer actual sources, rather than opinions on those sources.
*This is an academic essay, and I could not find a version for free public access. Via ResearchGate, you can request a copy from the author after setting up an account. I read the full-text version via my institution’s academic library access to Sage Journals. All sources cited by Dhamoon listed in full at the bottom of this article.
As such, rather than limiting intersectionality research to “a content specialization in populations with intersecting marginalized identities” (Hancock 2007, 64), this analytic paradigm can be widely applied to the study of social groups, relations, and contexts, so as to go beyond the conventional scope of nonwhite women. On this basis, as a framework of analysis that is widely applicable to various relations of marginality and privilege, intersectionality can be integrated into mainstream social science ways of conducting research and building knowledge.
The notion of mainstreaming intersectionality is appealing for many reasons. As Ann Phoenix and Pamela Pattynama (2006, 187) note, it foregrounds a richer ontology than approaches that attempt to reduce people to one category at a time, it treats social positions as relational, and it makes visible the multiple positioning that constitutes everyday life and the power relations that are central to it. As well, in addition to producing new theories of discrimination and important epistemological insights, intersectionality brings fresh perspectives on many legal and policy arenas related to human rights, the family, employment, criminal law, and immigration (Carbado and Gulati 2000–2001, 701).
As its starting point, intersectionality opposes the idea that subject formation and identities are unified and autonomous.
Hancock (2007, 64) specifies that intersectionality is based on the idea that more than one category should be analyzed, that categories matters equally and that the relationship between categories is an open empirical question, that there exists a dynamic interaction between individual and institutional factors, that members within a category are diverse, that analysis of the individual or set of individuals is integrated with institutional analysis, and that empirical and theoretical claims are both possible and necessary.
In general, as Brah and Phoenix (2004, 76) state, intersectionality refers to “the complex, irreducible, varied, and variable effects which ensue when multiple axes of differentiation — economic, political cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential — intersect in historically specific contexts.”
Crenshaw’s formulation of intersectionality has been enormously significant, as it further opened up a conceptual space through which to study how various oppressions work together to produce something unique and distinct from any one form of discrimination standing alone.
Patricia Hill Collins (2000, 18), for instance, uses intersectionality to refer to “particular forms of oppressions, for example, the intersections of race and gender, or of sexuality and nations.” She understands these to be micro-level processes regarding how each individual and group occupies a social position, which are located within a system of “interlocking oppressions.” Together, argues Collins, the micro (intersectional) and macro (interlocking) processes shape oppression. Thus, for Collins, the concepts of intersectionality and interlocking are complementary.
While Crenshaw’s use of this concept reflects the view that aspects of iden- tification and power do not exist apart from each other, the metaphor of intersecting roads has come to falsely suggest that there are separable, pure, containable ways to analyze subject formation and power. As Crenshaw (2010) has recently noted, this is contrary to her conception, which was premised on a dynamic notion of intersectionality, whereby the roads emerged from various histories, became politically relevant because of historical repetition, and were constituted through movement that affected people and existing structures.
Considerations in Mainstreaming Intersectionality, Dhamoon.
References
Brah, Avtar, and Ann Phoenix. 2004. Ain’t I a woman? Revisiting intersectionality. Journal of International Women’s Studies 5 (3): 75–86.
Carbado, Devon W., and Mitu Gulati. 2000–2001. The fifth black woman. Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues 11:701–29.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness and the politics of empowerment. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1989. Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989:139–67.
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1994. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of colour. In The public nature of private violence, ed. M. A. Fineman and R. Mykitiul, 93–120. New York: Routledge.
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 2010. Panel on: Lost in translation? A conversation about the challenges of advancing critical the- ory. Paper read at the Intersectionality: Challenging Theory, Reframing Politics, Transforming Movements conference, Los Angeles.
Hancock, Ange-Marie. 2007. When multiplication doesn’t equal quick addition: Examining intersectionality as a research paradigm. Perspectives on Politics 5 (1): 63–79.
Phoenix, Ann, and Pamela Pattynama. 2006. Editorial. European Journal of Women’s Studies 13 (3): 187–92.
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With I Am Intersectionality, I hope to provide thought-provoking resources that will help us understand more about our own personal intersections, and what those intersections mean in the historical and social moment we are living in today. If you’d like to get an occasional email with articles and resources on intersectionality, sign up here!
