ABSTRACT
The travel of concepts is never about the simple transference of a cultural or political idea from one milieu to another, but always also “a process of translation of diverse life-worlds and conceptual horizons about being human”. Anxieties around intersectionality's origins and travel have produced limited and less nuanced accounts of where intersectionality lands. As queerness gained public visibility and social acceptance—even as it remained criminalized—questions around intersectionality grew prominent amongst queer rights activists in India. In comparison to queer feminist activists in Kolkata at least, feminist and queer student activists in South African cities like Cape Town and Johannesburg developed a far more explicit attachment to and articulation of an intersectional politics. Intersectionality has been marked by excessive travel—travel that has taken it beyond its intellectual, discursive, and spatial origins, stretching but also diluting, many have argued, the analytical bite and political imperative of the concept.
