ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the difficulties of pursuing intersectionality as a repertoire for inclusion as part of a prefigurative politics. Based on a case study of gynaecological self-help activism in France, it evidences a strong hope for intersectionality, seen as a way to truly realise a space free from power relations and to bring about new ways of relating to each other. Relying on a consciousness-raising strategy, self-help practices are supposed to create feminists and to shape a certain kind of feminists. Through the acknowledgement of privileges and the development of practices of inclusion, organisers thus hope to create feminists committed to intersectionality. Based on the study of a particular conflict over the status given to authority and expertise that divided self-helpers, the chapter argues that intersectional expectations are not always sufficient to prevent processes of marginalisation and informal exclusion. It unveils the affective dimensions of self-help activism, and shows how the desire for intersectionality collides with the reproduction of racial power relations.
