ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the historical context that undergirds the contemporary branding of intersectionality, namely, the neoliberal brand culture that authorizes a commodification and marketing of “diversity,” often manifest in corporate diversity training programs, advertising and marketing campaigns, which are typically introduced when racism achieves a heightened popular visibility. The cultural and media strategies that are involved when branding political concepts like intersectionality share a history with other political movements that have also been coopted, branded, and marketed. Neoliberal brand culture has authorized and encouraged corporations to embrace a particular version of diversity, one that is emptied of political and cultural significance and made palatable for a consumer marketplace. Woke-vertising and fem-vertising yoke rhetorics of Black social activism and popular feminism to brands and products, capitalizing on the relative visibility of anti-racist and feminist activism in the 21st century.
