We begin the section of the course titled
THE MATRIX OF DOMINATION, STANDPOINT THEORY, AND INTERSECTIONALITY
Tuesday, 16 September—What it takes to create knowledges: standpoint theory and identity politics
• read: Collins, Prefaces, Acknowledgements, Parts 1 and 3, Glossary: pp. vi-44; 227-290; 298-301.Thursday, 18 September—Beginning in the Middle
• DUE: summary sheet 2, completed before and with book group.
Collins' matrix of domination brings together marxist standpoint theories and postmodern theories of subjectivity and positionality to create an afro-centric feminism. In the years in which Black Feminist Thought becomes very influential, a range of identity-based feminisms assert their histories and disciplinarities. Legal studies produce critical race theory. Intersectionality becomes both an umbrella term for many theories of political subjectivity, and also a new social science based methodology across disciplines.
===
"That life is complicated is a fact of great analytic importance." -- Patricia Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights
Intersectionality is a powerful key word in feminism today. It has its intellectual histories and many political meanings and manifestations. For some it is a very general term that includes many kinds of analysis of simultaneous oppressions. For others it is a very specific term that varies in its use from group to group, but lately has come to include particular methodologies for research. In many uses its meanings will slip among the more general and the very specific.
I will use it myself as an umbrella term that includes several kinds of analysis:
• how privilege and oppression have relational forms, meanings, histories and materialities
• how what we know is impacted by our positions within systems of power
• how who we are is socially constructed; and
• how we can change these; that is, change our conditions of oppression and privilege, the very terms of who we are, and the ways we create, share, demonstrate and use our knowledges.
===
Some key terms (as discussed and asserted in the Wikipedia):
"matrix of domination"
"standpoint feminism"
"subject position"
"social constructionism"
"postmodern feminism"
"afrocentrism"
"identity politics"
"critical race theory"
"intersectionality theory"
===
Patricia Hill Collins' Black Feminist Thought is not only a very influential book and set of ideas that have a strong impact on what feminists think of intersectionality today, it also gives us a concrete way to locate these ideas in various histories of thinking, acting, and naming politically.
As Collins comes to revise the book over a twenty year period, these revisions reflect changes in US feminisms as they attempt to grapple with (p. 9):
• "new forms of injustice,"
• "social theories expressed by women emerging from ...diverse groups,"
• forms of thought that "diverge from standard academic theory," and
• attempts to be both specific about particular forms of oppression and also
• be able to generalize from these to others,
• and especially, to create alliances for social justice among many oppressed peoples.
What Collins' revisions attempt to grapple with are continually shifing contexts: dynamic, changing systems of power and emerging forms of resistance and social change.
===
Collins works hard in her book to allow simultaneously for:
• centering on the experiences of black women in order to reveal the contours of a unique configuration of factors as black feminism thought; and also
• creating a framework of interpretation in which such centering is situational.
In other words, this center "pivots" when different social groups examine their own unique configuration of factors that create their own situated standpoint knowledges of oppresion and privilege.
We might consider this a kind of intersectionality in which, this time, black feminisms' "center" reveals a specific set of relations between oppression and privilege, what Collins calls its "matrix of domination."
Another analysis could pivot this center, and create a different "wheel" of relations out of the standpoints of a different oppressed group, say, LGBT political struggles, histories and institutionalized oppressions.
This way of using intersectionality arises from the histories of US activism in which different groups worked out what Benita Roth calls "separate roads to feminism." These groups both overlapped in memberships and politics but also prioritized "organizing one's own" as part of histories in which activating communities within these boundaries were necessary resources for support and resistance. "Category formation" is one name for this kind of boundary-drawing.===
Another way of understanding intersectionality might be imagined with a different metaphor. Instead of many wheels with their different spokes demonstating particular matrices of domination, perhaps something more like a web or net of connections and the contradictions of competing interests among activisms and activist groups themselves.
As groups become self-consciously aware of how they are in competition with each other for resources and for community, some turn to an analysis of coalitions to provide a different framework for understanding intersectionality and working across differences. They engage in what some have called "inclusive solidarity" and they struggle -- not always successfully -- to "organize in a manner in which no group becomes dominant, and where no 'one movement, organization, or social group is in the position of defining the issues and identities that matter.'" (Roth, p. 222)
===
While these may be two different ways of understanding intersectionality, they may also overlap, or exist together in that relationship Collins' calls "both/and."
She describes as one coalitional approach "transversal politics." (see pp. 245-249 especially.)
At the same time, both these forms and visions of intersectionality as they arise from social movements are partial ways of interpreting how thought and action work together in direct theory.
The part resources play in the ways groups use and think about intersectionality is one thread we will continue to explore throughout the course.
As you read Mohanty next week, you might consider what she says about such resources, and how she uses intersectional ideas and methods. And how she changes her analysis from her first version of "Under Western Eyes" to its "Revisited" version.
===
And when we return to Collins' book again, it will be to explore the specificity of black feminist thought and how such specificity contributes to activism, to feminist analysis, and to the empowerment of black women.
1999 Berkeley, CA Affirmative Acts: The writing, teaching and activism of ...
2 min - Feb 3, 2008 -===
Check out this review of Jordan's book Affirmative Acts.
===
Posts
