Intersectionality: Origins, Contestations, Horizons

By Anna Carastathis

Book Overview

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 Kimberl 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1496212487
• ISBN13: 9781496212481
• Release Date: May 2019
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"