ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 explores the evocation of the concept of intersectionality in spaces of gender knowledge production, and how the evocation of intersectionality operates at a conceptual level. Intersectionality is introduced as a contested concept which is pushed and pulled in many different directions, according to different origins stories and claims to ownership. Evocations of intersectionality are conceptual performatives which rely on different paths of signification, here termed citationality, but these paths can be blocked or reoriented when the citationality that is drawn on is unfamiliar or decontextualised. This is where the notion of ‘elsewhereness’ enters, in relation to how conceptual contestations are affected by unfamiliar citationality. The chapter centres on the narration and analysis of two autoethnographic ‘scenes’ at the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) conference in the US, where the conceptualisation of intersectionality and the role of unfamiliar citationality are explored using these scenes and other empirically grounded moments from the research study. In one of the scenes, I brought up race in a panel on queer studies in the university, and in the other scene I experienced a conceptual disorientation when attending a panel on fat studies in the women’s and gender studies classroom.
