Xena Wolf

Analytical Response Paper

“A Site of Struggle”: Disidentification and Intersectionality

“The fiction of identity is one that is accessed with relative ease by most majoritarian subjects.

Minoritarian subjects need to interface with different subcultural fields to activate their own senses of

self,” writes Jose Esteban Muñoz in Performing Disidentifications (Muñoz 5). The construction and

implications of this “fiction of identity” are explored through different lenses in Muñoz’s text, in

Kimberle Crenshaw’s “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of

Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” and in Gloria Anzaldua’s “La

conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness”. These three texts work in harmony together, as

they tackle issues of minoritarian identities, intersectionality, disidentification, and more through different

approaches, but often reach similar conclusions. Crenshaw plainly defines and illustrates her then-

groundbreaking theory of intersectionality, which Muñoz explicitly references and builds off of in his

theory of disidentification. Anzaldua’s piece is a more freeform examination of her mestiza identity, and

while she does not use the words “intersectionality” or “disidentification,” she certainly discusses and

therefore provides a more specific example of both concepts (though, interestingly, her article predates

both Crenshaw’s and Muñoz’s). To be sure, the three texts approach these topics from different angles,

but they illustrate and analyze each other’s points well.

Crenshaw’s main thesis concerns the theory that she terms “intersectionality,” essentially

referencing the hugely important but often-ignored effect of having an identity at the “intersection” of two

or more marginalized positionalities. She mainly focuses on the intersection of race and gender

discrimination in the case of Black women, but extrapolates theories that can be applied to virtually any

other intersectional identity. Her main goal in the essay is to address “a problematic consequence of the

tendency to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis” (Crenshaw

57). She elaborates on this “consequence,” noting that “in race discrimination cases, discrimination tends
to be viewed in terms of [male] Blacks; in sex discrimination cases, the focus is on [white] women. This

focus on the most privileged group members marginalizes those who are multiply-burdened and obscures

claims that cannot be understood as resulting from discrete sources of discrimination” (Crenshaw 57).

That is, if racism and sexism are viewed as entirely separate issues, and are addressed only concerning the

most privileged (relatively speaking) of each persecuted group, then there is no justice for those whom are

persecuted on both fronts. She unequivocally and convincingly concludes, “Because the intersectional

experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality

into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated”

(Crenshaw 58). The claim that this combination is “greater than the sum” is absolutely key to Crenshaw’s

theory, and while it is not an equation that can be mathematically quantified and reasoned out, her

argument is compelling. Furthermore, this essay lays the groundwork for aspects of Muñoz’s work a

decade later — and perhaps coincidentally, it puts into more analytical and academic terms that which

Anzaldua had written two years before.

Muñoz’s main focus is on his theory of disidentification in a broader sense, which he then applies

specifically to Crenshaw’s intersectionality. He opens his book with the example of the artist Marga

Gomez’s “public performance of… a powerful disidentification with the history of lesbian stereotyping in

the public sphere,” in which she recounts seeing a crude lesbian stereotype on TV as a child and

reshaping the “pathetic and abject” image into something “sexy and glamorous” with which she could

identify (i.e. assimilate into her own identity) (Muñoz 3). Muñoz uses this example to demonstrate the

core of his theory of disidentification, which he defines as “the survival strategies the minority subject

practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continuously elides or punishes the

existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship” (Muñoz 4). That is,

disidentification is a way for people who are not represented in the societally-deemed “ideal” model to

find — or create — their own alternative models within the mainstream. Muñoz soon explicitly links this

concept back to Crenshaw’s intersectionality, explaining, “those subjects who are hailed by more than

one minority identity component have an especially arduous time of it… Minority identifications are
often neglectful or antagonistic to other minoritarian positionalities” (Muñoz 8). He clearly explicates

(and later reinforces with specific examples) not only the complexity of constructing one’s minority

identity off of mainstream models, but the multiplied difficulties faced by those who comprise more than

one minoritarian positionality, just as Crenshaw argues (albeit in terms of discrimination rather than

identity).

In his further examination of the construction of these minoritarian identities, Muñoz asserts an

intentional and crucial ambiguity in his theory. He insists that “any narrative of identity that reduces

subjectivity to either a social constructivist model or… an essentialist understanding of the self” is

“exhausted” in contemporary academia and is clearly incomplete and far too simplistic (Muñoz 5).

Instead, he proposes disidentification as “the third mode of dealing with dominant ideology, one that

neither opts to assimilate within such a structure nor strictly opposes it; rather, disidentification is a

strategy that works on and against dominant ideology” (Muñoz 11). This more amorphous, flexible

approach emphasizes the ambiguity that is central to the concept of disidentification: it functions only

through a near-paradox, in which the minoritarian confronted with a mainstream model that does not

match their sense of self assimilates some aspects while rejecting — or rather, recycling, reforming, or

reshaping — the others. This sense of the cruciality of ambiguity in the formation of a (intersectionally)

minoritarian identity is reflected in Anzaldua’s work as well.

Anzaldua’s text is written in a much more personal and less rigidly academic style than the other

two, yet its point is conveyed at least as powerfully and insightfully, and is a convenient illustration of

many of Muñoz’s arguments, especially those building off of Crenshaw’s. For instance, she writes of her

mestiza identity, “Within us and within la cultura chicana, commonly held beliefs of the white culture

attack commonly held beliefs of the Mexican culture, and both attack commonly held beliefs of the

indigenous culture” (Anzaldua 78). This observation harkens back (or rather, forward, as it was written

first) to Muñoz’s discussion of intersectionality, in which he describes mutually “antagonistic” minority

identifications (Muñoz 8). Later, she writes, “In perceiving conflicting information and points of view,

she [la mestiza] is subjected to a swamping of her psychological borders. She has discovered that she
can’t hold concepts or ideas in rigid boundaries” (Anzaldua 79). Indeed, a large part of Anzaldua’s

argument pertains to a similar sense of ambiguity as Muñoz discusses. She elaborates, “La mestiza [must

embrace]… divergent thinking… one that includes rather than excludes. The new mestiza copes by

developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity” (Anzaldua 79). Here appear even

more parallels to Muñoz: Anzaldua’s “coping” corresponds to Muñoz’s description of disidentification as

a “survival strategy,” and “a tolerance for contradictions” is nearly a definition of disidentification itself.

Clearly, Anzaldua had independently observed — and astutely describes — the very concepts that Muñoz

dissects, thus adding further validity to each of their arguments, since multiple people had (presumably)

separately reached the same conclusion.

To Anzaldua, “Rigidity means death,” and this pithy sentiment seems to hold true across all three

texts (though more directly the latter two) (Anzaldua 79). These are theories and accounts chock full of

paradoxes and contradictions, but far from weakening the arguments, this ambiguity is acknowledged,

embraced, and even brought into the theory itself. Perhaps Crenshaw and Muñoz essentialize at times, but

overall, I find their arguments sound and compelling, all the more so with the support and further

elucidation from Anzaldua.

Anzaldua, Gloria. “La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness.” Borderlands / La Frontera.

The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books, 1987.

Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of

Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics.” 1989.

Muñoz, Jose Esteban. “Performing Disidentifications.” Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance

of Politics, U Of Minnesota Press, 1999.