ABSTRACT
In this chapter I explore certain themes that arise in attempting to theorise intersectionality, focusing in particular on identity categories and related claims for equality. My central concern is the tension between the idea of universal equality and the recognition of differences that underpins intersectionality theory. However, let me begin with a brief discussion of what we mean by ‘intersectionality’ to contextualise these issues. It is, of course, easy to think of the concept as directing us to the specific intersections of different social inequalities, particularly focused on race, gender and class in the work of Patricia Hill Collins, who is credited with developing ‘intersectionality’ in the theoretical framework for her book Black Feminist Thought (1990/2000). Although the recognition of gender as differentiated by race has been a feature of feminist thought through the different ‘waves’ of feminism, particularly in the USA during the nineteenth-century campaigns against slavery (Banks, 1990), and in second wave women’s liberation which engaged with black liberation politics and activism (Beal, 1970), there has been a growing critique that many feminist theories and concepts are derived from a white, middle-class experience. Hill Collins exemplifies the latter, but it is important to understand that she and other such thinkers are not merely drawing attention to race or ethnicity as another variable which must be included in any accounting of gender divisions, but rather that the intersections of different hierarchies create qualitatively different experiences of being gendered and racialised. She argues for an intersectional paradigm as the only way in which to astutely understand the complexities of American black women’s experiences within the specific historical context of US capitalism that structurally underpins formations of gender and race. In the second edition of her book, she reflects on the development of intersectional perspectives in the decade since the first edition, observing that by:
rejecting additive models of oppression, race, class and gender studies have progressed considerably since the 1980s. During that decade, African-
American scholar-activists, among others, called for a new approach to analyzing Black women’s experiences … Intersectional paradigms remind us that oppression cannot be reduced to one fundamental type, and that oppressions work together in producing injustice.
