Intersectionality: Origins, Contestations, Horizons

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" tends to circulate merely as a buzzword, Anna Carastathis joins other critical voices in urging 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, categorical 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 pervasive 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 that its potential to actualize coalitions can be enacted.


Author: Anna Carastathis
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 05/01/2019
Pages: 300
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.97lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.67d
ISBN: 9781496212481

About the Author
Anna Carastathis is the codirector of the Feminist Autonomous Centre for research in Athens, Greece, where she coordinates the research area, Intersectionality: Critiques of Power and Coalitional Politics. Carastathis is the coauthor of Reproducing Refugees: Photographìa of a Crisis.