(Being a) Feminist (is a) Struggle:  Intersectional Feminist Politics in the Era of The Women’s March

Auriemma, Rhiannon L

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-392d-ds28

Work

(Being a) Feminist (is a) Struggle: Intersectional Feminist Politics in the Era of The Women’s March

Public

Download PDF

“(Being a) Feminist (is a) Struggle: Intersectional Feminist Politics in the Era of the Women’s March” argues that contemporary feminist politics are characterized by debates and contestations concerning the political demands of intersectionality. Contemporary feminist theory and politics are particularly and peculiarly preoccupied with making these judgements about the political value of feminism by assessing fidelity and adherence to intersectionality as a way of measuring ethical imperatives, inclusivity, and political commitments to social justice. I suggest that it is necessary to attend to the political ambiguity and ambivalence inherent to the concept. To illustrate the role of ambiguity and ambivalence, I offer critical interpretations of the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw in order to trace the development of intersectionality as an analytic with connections to pragmatic uses of civil rights law and juridical understandings of politics. In drawing these connections, I argue that Crenshaw’s theorization of intersectionality offers us an ambiguous understanding of intersectionality’s politics that leaves open multiple avenues of radical resistance and practices of solidarity. I further suggest that Crenshaw’s account of intersectionality is characterized by ambivalence in relation to solidarity insofar as her critiques call into question Black women’s desires for unity with Black men and white women. Rather than resolve the tensions ambivalence and ambiguity alert us to, I conclude that thinking of intersectionality as a politically ambiguous concept characterized by ambivalence is generative for thinking feminist politics anew.

Creator