To Örebro University

Against the backdrop of the emergence of intersectionality as a dominant paradigm in feminist scholarship and activism, this book explores the genre of metacommentaries as critical responses to the development of intersectionality as a paradigm. With attention to the dispersal of intersectionality into ever-newer contexts – and the missteps and breakdowns that occur during this process – it addresses the concern that intersectionality is transforming into something unrecognisable, drifting too far away from its foundational sources and visions and becoming diluted by its expansion. Examining the process by which metacommentaries engage in a form of corrective storytelling – seeking to rescue intersectionality from misuse by pinning it down and returning it to where it belongs – Interpreting Intersectionality presents a critique of these gestures of correction, arguing that, far from reconnecting intersectionality with its roots and enabling it to realise its potential, such metacommentaries actually bind the scholarly discourse on intersectionality to an either/or argumentative dynamic. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students with an interest in feminist theory, gender studies and/or intersectional analysis.

Kimberlé W. Crenshaw’s first essay on intersectionality, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” (1989), presented two spatial metaphors for intersectionality: the well-known horizontal metaphor of the traffic intersection and the lesser-known vertical metaphor of the basement. While the metaphor of the basement has been “largely forgotten”, the metaphor of the traffic intersection has been taken up as intersectionality’s central image – as the primary way to explain and to metaphorically visualise the concept. Although the concept of intersectionality has gained a remarkably strong foothold in feminist and other critical discourses aiming to reveal the complexities of oppression and social inequality, scholars have objected to Crenshaw’s traffic intersection metaphor, arguing that it contains misleadingly additive imagery. In the more than three decades that have passed since the publication of Crenshaw’s essay, an abundance of – more or less eccentric – alternative metaphors for intersectionality have been proposed. This chapter maps the landscape of alternative metaphors and takes this map as a starting point to reflect upon what drives the attempts to find new and, supposedly, better intersectionality metaphors. It is suggested that the accelerated search for new metaphors can be described as a quest for the right metaphor for intersectionality, where what counts as “right” invariably involves the transcendence of additivity. What can this quest for the “new” and the “right” reveal to us about dominant narratives seeking to describe the future of intersectionality?

The claim that intersectionality has become a dominant paradigm for feminist scholarship and activism constitutes the backdrop to this study. One central arena for making such claims is the genre of metacommentaries on intersectionality. This genre often responds critically to the development of intersectionality into a paradigm and focuses on how the dispersal of intersectionality into ever-new contexts carries with it a series of missteps and breakdowns. The paradigmatisation of intersectionality is seen as problematic: its successes lead to failures; its popularity to a loss of radical edge; its travels to uprooting. This critique instigates a form of storytelling that attempts to bring intersectionality back to where it belongs. In this study, three responses to the paradigmatisation of intersectionality are identified. All work to pin it down and shape it as a proper object: to define its meanings, connect with its roots and realise its potential. These responses are read as themselves contributing to paradigmatisation, positioning the genre of metacommentaries as both “against” and as an important part of this process.

This thesis develops a critique of the gestures of correction inherent in the metacommentary responses. A central finding is that the construction of a proper form of intersectionality is contrasted against an improper other, known as “additivity”, a way of conceptualising the relationship between social categories as separate and independent, making it possible to add them to each other. More importantly, additivity serves as a conceptual placeholder for a long list of methodological no-go areas, such as essentialism, exclusion and binary thinking. Thus, in the metacommentaries, a starkly oppositional relationship is constructed: through making additivity into a pejorative, intersectionality becomes an imperative. A paradoxical effect of overstating this binary is that it reinforces the very theory/practice gap that is singled out as causing missteps and breakdowns in intersectional scholarship. Instead of struggling to resolve the problem of additivity at a metatheoretical level, it is suggested that we need to dissolve the exceptionalism that guides the corrective impulse and to acknowledge our collective implication in additive modes of thought.