Expanding Frontiers: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

A 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleIntersectionality intervenes in the field of intersectionality studies: the integrative examination of the effects of racial, gendered, and class power on peoples lives. While intersectionality tends to circulate merely as a buzzword, Anna Carastathis joins other critical voices in urging a more careful reading. Challenging the narratives of arrival that surround it, Carastathis argues that intersectionality is a horizon, illuminating ways of thinking that have yet to be realized; consequently, calls to go beyond intersectionality are premature. A provisional interpretation of intersectionality can disorient habits of essentialism, categorical purity, and prototypicality and overcome dynamics of segregation and subordination in political movements. Through a close reading of critical race theorist Kimberl Williams Crenshaws germinal texts, published more than twenty-five years ago, Carastathis urges analytic clarity, contextual rigor, and a politicized, historicized understanding of this pervasive concept. Intersectionalitys roots in social justice movements and critical intellectual projects-specifically black feminism-must be retraced and synthesized with a decolonial analysis so that its potential to actualize coalitions can be enacted.