Intersectionality: Origins, Contestations, Horizons

by Anna Carastathis

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.

 

 

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Sociology

300 pages, Hardcover

Published November 1, 2016

About the author

Anna Carastathis is a political theorist and co-director of the Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research in Athens. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from McGill University; her M.Sc. in Gender Studies from the University of the Aegean; and her B.A. (Honours) in Philosophy from the University of Alberta. Anna has held research and teaching positions in various institutions in Canada, the United States, and Greece (Université de Montréal, California State University Los Angeles, University of British Columbia, Concordia University, McGill University, Panteion University of Political and Social Sciences). She is the author of "Intersectionality: Origins, Contestations, Horizons" (published by the University of Nebraska Press, 2016), which was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association, and co-author of "Reproducing Refugees: Photographìa of a Crisis," (with visual sociologist Myrto Tsilimpounidi, published by Rowman & Littlefield International, 2020).

Reviews

[E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thorough, informative, and compelling discussion of intersectionality. Kimberle Crenshaw's original writings introducing the metaphor are carefully interpreted. They are also situated within a long tradition of Black feminist thought. Carastathis also considers a wide variety of criticisms and later developments of the idea. And she supplements it with decolonial ideas of Gloria Anzaldua, Andrea Smith, and Maria Lugones in ways that are really compelling. This is a heavy academic work, full of theory, but if you are interested in understanding this concept of Critical Race Theory more in-depth, I'd recommend the book.

[thalia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exhaustively thorough in most sections, somewhat redundant or reductionist in others. A great introduction reader for WGS studies. The strength of the project lies in its chronologically offered history of intersectionality.
I think I’ve wrote or alluded to this before, but i am more a fan of brevity when reading. Dense theory like this has a style of writing that is often frustratingly repetitive and obscure.
With those comments in mind, this is an important contribution to clarifying discourse WGS.

[Jules]

It’s good. I read this looking for a clear definition of intersectionality and found that Carastathis’s writing offers an vital history of the concept of intersectionality which leads to an uplifting critique of how the concept has been subverted and flattened. The language in the book was clear yet still a little challenging for me but i appreciated the framing of contestations and horizons Carastathis’s has for the future of intersectionality studies. If use intersectionality in a generic way in your activism, scholarship, or professional life i recommend this book.

[Juliana]

me aventé todo un libro de más de 100 páginas por un trabajo que no lo vale sólo por mi reading challenge? sí.