Is she a Black Woman or a Woman Who Is Black ?
The heroine of Assembly and
Intersectionality.
Intersectionality in literary studies refers to the examination of how various social
categories (for instance, race, gender, class, sexuality, ability and others) intersect,
namely pass or lie across each other, to shape individuals' experiences and identities
in literary texts. This analytical framework was originally developed by legal scholar
Kimberlé Crenshaw in her now seminal article ‘Mapping the Margins:
Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’ Stanford
Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. Her work has been widely adopted across disciplines,
including literary studies, to understand the complexities of power dynamics and
social hierarchies, when multiple marginalized identities intersect with each other.
The very concept of intersectionality comprises of a cluster of theoretical positions
seeking to problematise the view that identity categories, and the web of social
relations in which they are located, are experienced as ‘separate roads’ (Roth, 2004).
The origin of the concept of intersectionality provenance of the concept may be traced
to a particular black feminist critique of the ways in which mainstream, that is White,
feminism had historically ignored the intersections of race and patriarchy (hooks,
1984; Crenshaw, 1988, 1991). Thus, intersectionality has led feminist researchers to
explore how their ‘moral positions as survivors of one expression of systemic
violence become eroded in the absence of accepting responsibility of other
expressions of systemic violence’ (Collins, 2000: 247).
Crenshaw’s contribution distinguishes between what she terms
structural and political intersectionality. Structural inequality focuses on
the direct impact of inequalities and their intersections as experienced
by individuals in society. Political intersectionality focuses on the
relevance of the impact of inequalities and their intersections to political
strategies. The female protagonist is a black woman, and thus she forms part of two
marginalised groups, namely black and female. Compared to the discrimination faced
by individuals that hold one marginalised identity (i.e. white women or black men),
she experiences double discrimination – sexism and racism. Intersectionality-based
reading of Assembly
Many UK organisations are replete with studies on ‘diversity’, but is limited to
gender, without examining the intersection of race and gender. When they aspire or
attain leadership roles, the barriers and challenges include gender/racial stereotypes,
microaggressions, and bias.
(Close the Gap, 2019).
positioning of black women but also as a means of liberating these women
and their communities. oppressive structures of race, gender, and class in
the lives
of these women. She is not marginalized .
Diversity as a commodity
The right sort of diversity. Marxist reading.
black
womanhood in the policymaking process.
Crenshaw (1991, 1245) employed
“interlocking” or “intersection” to highlight how different forms of
oppression, race and gender “converge.” This was an alternative to the
view that looks at how multiple forms of oppression modify one another.
I also encourage us to be interdisciplinary in our
study of intersectionality.
On the surface, it would appear that any work
involving intersectionality, since it is a challenge to existing power
structures, is inherently an act of liberation. Research that simply
describes how marginalized groups operate or function in the face of
their oppression can be helpful in the formulation of a political
framework of liberation. However, when such research stands alone, it is
not designed to liberate marginalized groups
By not specifying particular social identity structures, these newer definitions expand the
concept of intersectionality beyond race, class, and gender to include age, attractiveness,
body type, caste, citizenship, education, ethnicity, height and weight assessments,
immigration status, income, marital status, mental health status, nationality, occupation,
physical ability, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and other naturalized
—though not necessarily natural—ways of categorizing human populations. This expansion
of the definitional scope of intersectionality to include all social identity structures means
that everyone's unique social advantages and disadvantages should be subject to scrutiny.
Moreover, “everyone” entails not only the multiplicatively oppressed (e.g., African American,
disabled, and homosexual women), but also the multiplicatively privileged—for example,
“[the] white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure” (Lorde [1984]
2007, p. 116).
