Abstract
This paper develops and articulates a metaphysics of intersectionality, the idea that multiple axes of social oppression cross-cut each other. Though intersectionality is often described through metaphor, theories of intersectionality can be formulated using the tools of contemporary analytic metaphysics. A central tenet of intersectionality theory, that intersectional identities are inseparable, can be framed in terms of explanatory unity. Further, intersectionality is best understood as metaphysical and explanatory priority of the intersectional category over its constituents, akin to metaphysical priority of the whole over its parts.
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Notes
See Bright et al. (2016) for a causal theory of intersectionality.
For an explication of the metaphysics of gender, see Witt (2014).
For example, see Carastathis (2014) for a critique of the widespread adoption of intersectionality as a theoretical tool.
This usage of “intersectionality” is not uncontroversial. For the historical origins of intersectionality, and reasons to restrict the term’s usage to particular minority identities, see Gines (2011).
The concept of intersectionality arguably predates Crenshaw’s usage. The Combahee River Collective, a prominent black feminist group, published a seminal statement in 1977 according to which “we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.”
For another examination of the use of metaphor in defining intersectionality, see Jorba and de Zárate (MS).
Thanks to Marta Jorba and Erica Rodriguez for pressing this point.
Haslanger’s social race realism is formulated thus: “A group is racialized (in context C) if and only if (by definition) its members are (or would be) socially positioned as subordinate or privileged along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.) (in C), and the group is “marked” as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of ancestral links to a certain geographical region” (Haslanger, 2012, 308).
“The Intolerant Left”, The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/11/the-intolerant-left/545783/.
Coincidentally, Lugones (2003, 122) also appeals to the metaphor of baking, writing: “if mayonnaise is curdled, the egg yolk, oil, and water are not separated cleanly and completely; instead ‘‘they coalesce toward oil or toward water […] you are left with yolky oil and oily yolk”.
This is presumably what is meant by Lugones (2007, 192–193), when she writes “It is only when we perceive gender and race as intermeshed or fused that we actually see women of color.”.
Indeed Garry (2011, 830) writes that intersectionality “does not abolish identity categories; instead they become more complex, messy, and fluid.”
Zack (2005) argues that the intersectional approach contributes to political fragmentation of feminist discourse.
See Bernstein (2016) for a discussion of what makes overdetermination problematic.
This sort of relationship seems particularly suited for capturing the relationship between disability status and gender. A common complaint among those who are visibly disabled is that they are not viewed as appropriate objects of sexual attraction. Dennis Whitcomb (private correspondence) notes that this idea is very similar to organic unity.
Note that this is slightly different than more general forms of social construction. For a recent account of social construction, see Díaz-León (2015).
Indeed Schaffer (2017) himself views social construction as a kind of grounding.
For a view of intersectionality as emergent, see Jorba and Rodó-de-Zárate (2019).
Taking intersectional categories to be the most fundamental gives rise to a natural objection: are the most specific categories always the most explanatory ones? For example, is the social category disabled lesbian black woman necessarily more explanatory than a coarser grained social category? Not necessarily. Increase in a social category’s specificity does not always correspond to an increase in explanatory power. As I see it, certain “social category magnets”—joint-carving social categories akin to reference magnets—are the most explanatory, whether or not they are the most fine-grained. Intersectional categories often, but do not always, carve at the joints.
Following Manne (2017), I take misogyny to refer to the “enforcement wing” of patriarchal oppression, and misogynoir to refer to the enforcement wing of racialized sexist oppression.
Dotson (2016) argues against the fundamentality assumption on methodological and practical grounds.
For example, see Wilkinson (1995).
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Linda Alcoff, Liam Kofi Bright, David Chalmers, Robin Dembroff, Esa Díaz-León, Sally Haslanger, Katharine Jenkins, Marta Jorba, Rachana Kamtekar, Dan López de Sa, Rebecca Mason, Daniel Nolan, Michael Rea, Kate Ritchie, Erica Rodriguez, Aness Webster, and Dennis Whitcomb for valuable feedback on this paper. Thanks also to audiences at GRSelona, Social Metaphysics at the University of Nottingham, Social Ontology at Tufts University, Minds of Our Own at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the 2019 Pacific APA Symposium Session on this paper for helpful discussion.
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Bernstein, S. The metaphysics of intersectionality. Philos Stud 177, 321–335 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01394-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01394-x