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Abstract
Intersectionality is a concept that aims at handling the complexity of social life. It is often presented as a sensitive, and thus accountable, approach to the complexity of life lived in an age of globalization, migration, and displacements of identities, individuals, and groups. This notion of intersectionality presupposes that approaching complexity requires more than the mere adding up of categories like race, class, and gender; it requires an approach presupposing that these categories intersect in mutually constitutive ways in and through socio‐cultural hierarchies and power dimensions that produce complex relations of inclusion, exclusion, domination, and subordination. For feminists, this constructivist approach to identity categories seems promising; on the one hand, intersectionality rejects essentialism and reductionism, on the other hand, the complexity sensitivity of intersectionality maintains the possibility of feminist politics in a complex world, because politics no longer amounts to essentialist identity politics. In this article we want to ask, however, if the complexity sensitivity of intersectionality really is the solution to the problem of potential essentialism and reductionism in feminism. Or does intersectionality rather reproduce the problem of reductionism and the logic of identity in new, more sophisticated forms? Can feminism at all avoid essentialism and processes of othering? Is it possible to come to terms with the “will to power” inherent in all research by demonstrating a “will to empower”? The purpose of this article is not to evaluate whether different intersectionality studies are capable of accounting for complexity and thereby making it possible to avoid essentialism, reductionism, and othering. The purpose is, rather, to highlight and discuss some implications of the constructionism of intersectionality. As we will try to show, the constructionism that is claimed to form the basis of intersectionality, in opposition to additive approaches to social differences, is sometimes compromised for the sake of accountability.
Notes
1. The phrase “Ain't I a Woman?” was first introduced by the female slave Sojourner Truth in the United States, and has later become a much‐used and paraphrased title by feminists and other writers who call into question unified and thus exclusive categories, among these the black feminist bell hooks, whose book, Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism (1981), has become a classic.
2. To essentialize a category or a group of people means to define them by fixed characteristics or qualities without which the category or group would not be identifiable.
3. The concept of intersectionality denotes a specific relation between “sections”. The terms “section” and “category” are generally used interchangeably.
4. It must be noted that the notions of “inter‐action” and “intra‐action” employed in this section are not to be confused with the notions of “inter‐categorical” and “intra‐categorical” discussed later in this article.
5. Human will can be viewed as the urge to create order out of original chaos. The “will to power”, Schmidt and Kristensen (Citation1986: 18) assert, is an attempt to endow the constant stream of creation with a finality, i.e. to give it a form. The “will to power” reveals itself in all human relations, in cognitive processes and in social processes. In his book The “Will to Power” (Citation1967), it becomes clear that Nietzsche thinks that we compensate for the lack in our instincts through the development of categories; we apply our subsuming and logical power in order to survive and thrive.
6. It must be noted that even though Skeggs analyses the mutual construction of gender, class, nation, and sexuality in her texts, and may therefore be characterized as an intersectionality researcher, she does not use the concept of intersectionality. In a conference paper, she criticizes the concept for being reductive (Skeggs Citation2006). For instance, she maintains that setting up a series of equivalences between race, gender, and class obscures the peculiar logic of class struggle, which aims to overcome, subdue and even annihilate the other. Like several feminists, including those who use the concept of intersectionality (e.g. Moore Citation1994; Verloo Citation2006; Yuval‐Davis Citation2006), Skeggs calls for sensitivity to the way the different logics bring conflicts of power.
7. The notion of “strategic essentialism” has been debated a great deal within feminism. It refers to the idea that essentialism may be used strategically, for political purposes. Some feminists claim, for instance, that feminists cannot afford not to be essentialist, and that this necessitates a deliberate employment of notions of Woman and Women as subjects of political theory, politics, and policy.
8. Some would perhaps associate this with “strategic essentialism”, but on the other hand, one could claim that the concept “strategic essentialism” is premised on other and more specific assumptions—and thus has other implications—than just a “provisional adaptation of categories”, which makes it difficult to draw a comparison between the two.