Black feminist transcendence framework: Mabogo P. More’s politics of being and intersectionality

In this chapter, I draw insights from Black feminist and postcolonial thinking to contribute to a growing engagement with the concept of intersectionality in the subfield of feminist political ecology. Employing the concept of postcolonial intersectionality, I reflect on how Black women in Latin America operationalize particular knowledges and their racialized gendered subjectivities to challenge regional imaginaries that limit livelihoods and access to natural resources. This chapter draws from ethnographic and historical data collection and is supplemented with news articles, activist scholarship, government documents and secondary resources. Together, I centre the intersectional logics of power in Bocas and argue that Afro-Panamanian women lead a material and symbolic process of place making, one that prioritizes life while struggling over carnal, gendered and racialized dispossession and the right to be recognized as human.

In 2015, the United Nations set in motion the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015–2024). While this mandate provides much to celebrate, its reliance on universal and human rights narratives collides against the reality of a persistent inferiorization of Afro-descendant communities as less-than-human. The paradoxical nature of human rights discourses notwithstanding, Afro-descendant women (ADW) leaders in Latin America embrace the opportunity provided by the UN Decade, to rethink human rights discourses and Afro-descendant inclusion in development practice. I draw insight in this article from black feminist and postcolonial thinking to contribute to a growing engagement with the concept of intersectionality in the subfield of feminist political ecology. Employing the concept of postcolonial intersectionality, I reflect on how ADW operationalize particular knowledges and their racialized gendered subjectivities to challenge regional imaginaries that limit livelihoods, access to natural resources and that cast Afro-descendants outside humanity. I connect such organized activism to that of quiet, every day and largely unrecognized acts of resistance among Afro-Antillean women situated in the growing residential tourism enclave along Panama’s Atlantic coast, in a place known as ‘Bocas’. This article draws from ethnographic and historical data collection and is supplemented with news articles, activist scholarship, government documents and secondary resources. Together, I center the intersectional logics of power in Bocas and argue that ADW lead a material and symbolic process of place-making, one that prioritizes life while struggling over carnal, gendered and racialized dispossession and the right to be recognized as human.

The review article explores the concept of intersectionality within feminist movements from a global perspective. First, it reconstructs the origins of the concept. Second, it summarizes the main critical debates. Third, it gives an overview on the new wave of feminist movements, by exploring the way several movements from the North to the Global South have actively engaged with the concept of intersectionality into action. Finally, the article discusses opportunity and threats in the diffusion of the concept, both in the academic debate and in the field of collective action. The main takeaways of the article are: the emergence of the concept of intersectionality within the activism of women of color and Black feminism; the role of intersectionality as a critical analysis of power structures; the intersectional character of the new wave of feminist movements; the risks associated with the diffusion of the concept of intersectionality; the bleaching of intersectionality; and the co‐opting and depowering of the concept in an increasingly aggressive neo‐liberal order.

Located in African American women's everyday and historical experiences of oppression and resistance, black feminist epistemology and critical social theory, Patricia Hill Collins raises the intellectual level in all these arenas. Developed through a dynamic interaction with black women's everyday struggles, black feminist thought is important not only for its contribution to critical social theories and methodologies, but also for providing important knowledge for the use of social justice movements. It uses intersectional analysis to shed light on the relationships between the structural, symbolic and everyday aspects of domination and individual and collective struggles in various domains of social life. Collins offers an interpretive framework for understanding the experiences of African American women. However, the significance of black feminist thought reaches far beyond US and black American communities. This article is a reading of Collins’s concept of intersectionality, the relationship between oppression and resistance, and the politics of empowerment.

Kimberley Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, read in the context of Black Feminist iterations, enables me to sift through the conflation of categories of analysis and praxis in three ways. Firstly, I analyse the purported tensions between Black Feminist theorists and decolonial feminist interpretations of intersectionality, and the attendant consequences of these. In so doing I navigate the fault-lines of the arguments articulated, and while acknowledging the merits of the critiques, I suggest that Black Feminist scholarship in conversation with decolonial feminist approaches may still yield possibilities for coalition which allow for subjectivity that breaks from colonial logics of essence and immutability. Secondly, I reflect on how intersectionality and the coloniality of gender have been taken up in legal discourse in South Africa, and in what ways the tensions and possibilities manifest and are navigated. I argue that fissures may be over-emphasised, replicating a divide and conquer mode of operation while simultaneously facilitating the, at times subtle, selective cooptation of these terms into liberal discourse. Finally, at the centre of this piece is the fact that personhood is the location from which meaning of the world is made and articulated – a question of ontology (Alcoff 2020). Despite the multiple meanings of personhood that suggest that it is both ambiguous and fluid, it has real implications in space/place and time interpersonally and/as structurally (Alcoff 2020). The law, authorised through the person of the state that it circularly authorises/legitimises into existence, holds a monopoly over legitimate force that is both physical and symbolic (Brubaker & Cooper 2020). What is unresolved is the question of who is a person.

The concept of intersectionality is often used to grasp the interconnections between the traditional background categories of gender, ethnicity, race, age, sexuality and class. The concept can be a useful analytical tool in tracing how certain people seem to get positioned as not only different but also troublesome and, in some instances, marginalized. In research focused on subjectification and the variability of social life, a retooling and differentiating of the concept is needed. We do not know how the overall categories work and intersect with the lived experiences of subjects and we need to rethink the concept, which can be useful in specifying the troublesomeness of some subjectivities in a diverse and complex version of lived experience. By taking into account the above-mentioned shortcomings, the article lays the foundation for a theoretical reworking of the concept, grounded in empirical studies of subjectification processes on a subject level in a school context.

Intersectionality is a successful analytical concept drawn from anti-racist and feminist theory and praxis which names how axis of social difference – such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and citizenship – operate as intersecting sites of lived experience, power, and marginalization. Intersectionality radically reconceptualizes how we understand oppression to operate and how a subject's multiple identities and embodiments, and relations to violence, can be recognized and made intelligible. While the concept of intersectionality has achieved considerable traction across the humanities and social sciences in recent decades, the take up of an intersectional approach and framework within the interdisciplinary field of memory studies is suspiciously under-developed. Grappling with what intersectionality can bring to emergent discussions of memory activism on a transnational scale, this chapter offers an introduction to intersectionality as an analytical apparatus and political framework. It maps how Black feminists and scholars of color have engaged with intersectionality's potential to be put to a multitude of uses, questions how memory activism can benefit from a nuanced understanding of this analytical framework, and spotlights a range of ethical, epistemological, and methodological issues for memory scholars and practitioners when taking up an intersectional approach.

Originating nearly 40 years ago in black feminist thought, the concept of intersectionality has become established as an analytical lens and social theory to account for and better understand multiple and compounding identities and how they influence discrimination and privilege. Within agricultural research for development (AR4D), intersectional approaches are relatively novel compared to traditional gender and social analyses, and to date there are limited tools and empirical studies in AR4D that have adopted such an approach. Without a strong conceptual and methodological foundation, future intersectional approaches in AR4D risk treating multiple identities as standalone “tick box” variables, and not as a holistic way of understanding and addressing these multiple sources of marginalization. To emphasize the potential value-addition of deeper engagement with intersectionality, this chapter outlines the state-of-the-field on intersectional analyses in AR4D and how they are situated within wider gender mainstreaming in international development. Using an empirical case study on index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) in Northern Kenya, the chapter demonstrates an intersectional analysis in AR4D, based on a new conceptual framework and method (Tavenner et al. Gend Technol Dev 26(3):385–403, 2022). This chapter explores how AR4D can deepen its understanding of intersectionality and the potential integration of this concept in a meaningful way that supports addressing multiple layers of inequalities and marginalization in agricultural research methods and practice.

Nesse artigo apresento caminhos da pesquisa, resultados e reflexões sobre experiências de trabalhadoras domésticas e donas de casa da região do Triângulo Mineiro. No trabalho de pesquisa, na atuação junto a essas mulheres, nas atualizações dos referenciais teóricos aponto para o desejo e importância de compreender as trajetórias dessas sujeitas, a partir do significado que dão às suas experiências, a partir da forma como organizam suas falas e o sentido que conferem às suas vidas. Ancorada nas contribuições teórico-metodológicas da história social, principalmente de Thompson; Williams, e das contribuições da História Oral, com Portelli a pesquisa de campo foi realizada. As recém traduzidas obras das feministas negras como Ângela Davis, bell hooks, Audre Lorde têm uma contribuição essencial para pensar o tema do trabalho doméstico e sua necessária revisão para o feminismo que contemple a maioria.

This article offers an approach to the experiences of public policy formation that have used the concept of intersectionality, in particular, those policies aimed at LGBTI people in Bogota, Valle del Cauca and Colombia in general. We propose an analytical exercise of these experiences, in which we have each participated at different times. These exercises have challenged us in terms of bringing proposals from social movements and academia—such as black feminism and feminisms of color, among other actors—to the realm of the state. Our participation in the formation of these policies, and in writing this article, let us seek strategies that allow for movements among different political arenas and discursive practices, illuminating porosities in and linkages among different scenarios: the state, academia and social movements.

This chapter offers an approach to the experiences of public policy formation that have used the concept of intersectionality, in particular, those policies aimed at LGBTI people in Bogota, Valle del Cauca, and Colombia. The authors propose an analytical exercise of these experiences, in which they have each participated at different times. These exercises have challenged the authors in terms of bringing proposals from social movements and academia, such as black feminism and feminisms of colour, among others, to the realm of the State. Their participation in the formation of these policies and in writing this chapter let them see strategies that allow movements among different political arenas and discursive practices, illuminating porosities and linkages within and among different scenarios: the State, academia, and social movements.

This essay aims to present the concept of intersectionality, proposed from black feminism, as an epistemic and practical research analysis tool for Brazilian and Latin American occupational therapy. Lélia Gonzalez’s concept of amefricanidade provides a basis to think about the everyday life of black and indigenous people living in colonized territories. Thus, this concept enables us to approach black and indigenous occupations and understand the exclusion and rupture processes brought about by racial inequalities. We introduce thoughts about intersectionality and coloniality from international contexts contributing to the propositions of occupational therapy. Not with the intention to close the debate, but rather with that of gathering previously started discussions, we conclude that the concept of intersectionality interests occupational therapy because it helps us understand the current processes of oppression in the face of the complex system of colonial, cis-heteronormative, patriarchal, capitalist, neoliberal and ableist oppression, as an ethical commitment and technical-professional accountability.

<p class="Body">Este artigo expõe uma revisão sucinta dos debates encetados nas últimas décadas acerca da noção de interseccionalidade entre as diversas abordagens do pensamento feminista, dos estudos de mulheres e das teorias de gênero contemporâneas. Partindo das contribuições dos "<em>black feminisms</em>", apresenta-se algumas visões sobre o contexto de formação do debate interseccional nos Estados Unidos e no Reino Unido e a seguir estabelece-se as principais vertentes de trabalho atualmente. Embasado em um levantamento bibliográfico de dezenas de artigos, ensaios e livros publicados nos últimos anos nos EUA e na Europa, este texto procura contribuir com uma "sumarização" de algumas das principais contribuições que a análise interseccional tem oferecido ao pensamento feminista e à teoria social como um todo, assim como propor a noção de "agência interseccional". Por fim, são apresentadas algumas considerações críticas a determinadas características que atravessam o campo e que geram questionamentos ainda em aberto.<strong> </strong></p>

In this chapter I offer a series of reflections toward contextualizing demands for defunding the police - and larger abolitionist projects - relative to women of color feminisms in order to underscore the expansive critical and imaginative implications of this thought and practice. First, I situate contemporary discourses surrounding identity and social justice relative to centuries-long traditions of Black feminisms, focusing on the concept of intersectionality in particular. Next, I reflect on one of the central insights of intersectional feminisms: the interconnection of social justice struggles. Drawing on work of Black feminists and other women of color feminists, I explore how this insight is central to abolition as a feminist strategy. Ultimately, I reflect on how Black feminisms and other women of color feminisms call us to move beyond superficial conceptions of intersectional feminism in order to “build anew” - to imagine and create the world we want to live in together.

BackgroundIntersectionality is a concept that originated in Black feminist movements in the US-American context of the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in the work of feminist scholar and lawyer Kimberlé W. Crenshaw. Intersectional approaches aim to highlight the interconnectedness of gender and sexuality with other social categories, such as race, class, age, and ability to look at how individuals are discriminated against and privileged in institutions and societal power structures. Intersectionality is a “traveling concept”, which also made its way into bioethical research.MethodsWe conducted a systematic review to answer the question of where and how the concept of intersectionality is applied in bioethical research. The PubMed and Web of Science databases were systematically searched and 192 articles addressing bioethical topics and intersectionality were finally included.ResultsThe qualitative analysis resulted in a category system with five main categories: (1) application purpose and function, (2) social dimensions, (3) levels, (4) health-care disciplines and academic fields, and (5) challenges, limitations, and critique. The variety of academic fields and health-care disciplines working with the concept ranges from psychology, through gynaecology to palliative care and deaf studies. Important functions that the concept of intersectionality fulfils in bioethical research are making inequities visible, creating better health data collections and embracing self-reflection. Intersectionality is also a critical praxis and fits neatly into the overarching goal of bioethics to work toward social justice in health care. Intersectionality aims at making research results relevant for respective communities and patients, and informs the development of policies.ConclusionsThis systematic review is, to the best of our knowledge, the first one to provide a full overview of the reference to intersectionality in bioethical scholarship. It creates a basis for future research that applies intersectionality as a theoretical and methodical tool for analysing bioethical questions.