When Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center was first published in 1984, it was welcomed and praised by feminist thinkers who wanted a new vision. Even so, individual readers frequently found the theory "unsettling" or "provocative." Today, the blueprint for feminist movement presented in the book remains as provocative and relevant as ever. Written in hooks's characteristic direct style, Feminist Theory embodies the hope that feminists can find a common language to spread the word and create a mass, global feminist movement.
Intersectionality is a widely adopted theoretical orientation in the field of women and gender studies. Intersectionality comes from the work of black feminist scholars and activists. Intersectionality argues identities such as gender, race, sexuality, and other markers of difference intersect and reflect large social structures of oppression and privilege, such as sexism, racism, and heteronormativity. The reach of intersectionality now extends to the fields of public health and knowledge translation. Knowledge translation (KT) is a field of study and practice that aims to synthesize and evaluate research into an evidence base and move that evidence into health care practice. There have been increasing calls to bring gender and other social issues into the field of KT. Yet, as scholars outline, there are few guidelines for incorporating the principles of intersectionality into empirical research. An interdisciplinary, team-based, national health research project in Canada aimed to bring an intersectional lens to the field of knowledge translation. This paper reports on key moments and resulting tensions we experienced through the project, which reflect debates in intersectionality: discomfort with social justice, disciplinary divides, and tokenism. We consider how our project advances intersectionality practice and suggests recommendations for using intersectionality in health research contexts. We argue that while we encountered many challenges, our process and the resulting co-created tools can serve as a valuable starting point and example of how intersectionality can transform fields and practices.
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We contextualize this conversation as part of ongoing processes and attempts to conceptualize a feminist peace, grounded in the everyday lives of many, particularly people in and from the Global South, as well as those affected by structural inequalities across multiple geographies. Despite the fact that this piece is bounded by its broadness, lack of specificity and word limits, we feel it resonates with those affected by structural and intersectional injustice and it reflects on the limits of academic theorizing and activist organizing. This conversation also highlights that although feminist peace opens up for conversations beyond mainstream understandings of peace, it can still be contentious if not accompanied with critical reflections and grounding in discourses of raciality, migration, de/coloniality, structural injustices and inequalities. By doing so, we aim to disturb hegemonic understandings and practices of peace, Peace Studies, feminisms, and the practice and implementation of so-called peacebuilding projects.
It can be hard to remember becoming a feminist if only because it ishard to remember a time that you did not feel that way. Is it possibleto have always been that way? Is it possible to have been a feministright from the beginning? A feminist story can be a beginning. Perhapswe can make sense of the complexity of feminism as an activist space ifwe can give an account of how feminism becomes an object of feeling, assomething we invest in, as a way of relating to the world, a way ofmaking sense of how we relate to the world. When did "feminism" become aword that spoke not just to you, but spoke you, that spoke of yourexistence or even spoke you into existence? The sound of it, your sound?How do we gather by gathering around this word, sticking to each otherby sticking to it? What did it mean, what does it mean, to hold onto"feminism," to fight under its name; to feel in its ups and downs, inits coming and goings, one's own ups and downs, one's own comings andgoings?
A feminist call might be a call to anger, to develop a sense of rageabout collective wrongs. And yet, it is important that we do not makefeminist emotion into a site of truth: as if it is always clear orself-evident that our anger is right. When anger becomes righteous itcan be oppressive; to assume anger makes us right can be a wrong. Weknow how easily a politics of happiness can be displaced into a politicsof anger: the assumption of a right to happiness can convert veryswiftly into anger toward others (immigrants, aliens, strangers) whohave taken the happiness assumed to be "by right" to be ours. It isprecisely that we cannot defend ourselves against such defensive use ofemotion that would be my point. Emotions are not always just, even thosethat seem to acquire their force in or from an experience of injustice.Feminist emotions are mediated and opaque; they are sites of struggle,and we must persist in struggling with them.[8]
After all, feminist spaces are emotional spaces, in which theexperience of solidarity is hardly exhaustive. As feminists we have ourown tables. If we are unseated by the family table, it does notnecessarily follow that we are seated together. We can place the figureof the feminist killjoy alongside the figure of the angry Black woman,explored so well by Black feminist writers such as Audre Lorde[9] andbell hooks[10]. The angry black woman can be described as a killjoy;she may even kill feminist joy, for example, by pointing out forms ofracism within feminist politics. She might not even have to make anysuch point to kill joy. Listen to the following description from bellhooks: "a group of white feminist activists who do not know one anothermay be present at a meeting to discuss feminist theory. They may feelbonded on the basis of shared womanhood, but the atmosphere willnoticeably change when a woman of color enters the room. The white womanwill become tense, no longer relaxed, no longer celebratory."[11]
It is not just that feelings are "in tension," but that the tensionis located somewhere: in being felt by some bodies, it is attributed ascaused by another body, who comes to be felt as apart from the group, asgetting in the way of its enjoyment and solidarity. The body of color isattributed as the cause of becoming tense, which is also the loss of ashared atmosphere. As a feminist of color you do not even have to sayanything to cause tension! The mere proximity of some bodies involves anaffective conversion. We learn from this example how histories arecondensed in the very intangibility of an atmosphere, or in thetangibility of the bodies that seem to get in the way. Atmospheresmight become shared if there is agreement in where we locate the pointsof tension.
The figure of the angry black woman is a fantasy figure that producesits own effects. Reasonable, thoughtful arguments are dismissed as anger(which of course empties anger of its own reason), which makes youangry, such that your response becomes read as the confirmation ofevidence that you are not only angry but also unreasonable! To makethis point in another way, the anger of feminists of color isattributed. You might be angry about how racism and sexismdiminish life choices for women of color. Your anger is a judgment thatsomething is wrong. But then in being heard as angry, your speech isread as motivated by anger. Your anger is read as unattributed, as ifyou are against x because you are angry rather than being angry becauseyou are against x. You become angry at the injustice of being heard asmotivated by anger, which makes it harder to separate yourself from theobject of your anger. You become entangled with what you are angry aboutbecause you are angry about how they have entangled you in your anger.In becoming angry about that entanglement, you confirm their commitmentto your anger as the truth "behind" your speech, which is what blocksyour anger, stops it from getting through. You are blocked by notgetting through.
Take the example of racism. It can be willful even to name racism: asif the talk about divisions is what is divisive. Given that racismrecedes from social consciousness, it appears as if the ones who "bringit up" are bringing it into existence. We learned that the very talk ofracism is experienced as an intrusion from the figure of the angry blackwoman: as if it is her anger about racism that causes feministestrangement. To recede is to go back or withdraw. To concede is togive way, to yield. People of color are often asked to concede to therecession of racism: we are asked to "give way" by letting it "go back." Not only that: more than that. We are often asked to embody acommitment to diversity. We are asked to smile in their brochures. Thesmile of diversity is a way of not allowing racism to surface; it is a formof political recession.
Audre Lorde teaches us how quickly the freedom to be happy istranslated into the freedom to look away from what compromises yourhappiness.[21] The history of feminist critiques of happiness could betranslated into a manifesto: Don't look over it: don't get overit. Not to get over it is a form of disloyalty. Willfulness is akind of disloyalty: think of Adrienne Rich's call for us to be disloyalto civilization. We are not over it, if it has not gone. We are notloyal, if it is wrong.[22] Willfulness could be rethought as astyle of politics: a refusal to look away from what has already beenlooked over. The ones who point out that racism, sexism, andheterosexism are actual are charged with willfulness; they refuse toallow these realities to be passed over.
8. For early work on feminist emotion see: AlisonJaggar, "Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology," in AnnGarry and Marilyn Pearsall (eds.), Women, Knowledge and Reality:Explorations in Feminist Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1996)166-190; and Elizabeth Spelman, "Anger and Insubordination," in Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (eds.), Women, Knowledge and Reality:Explorations in Feminist Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1989)263-274. For an important argument about the need to separate injusticefrom the experience of pain and hurt see: Lauren Berlant, "The Subjectof True Feeling: Pain, Privacy and Politics" in Sara Ahmed, Celia Lury,Jane Kilby, Maureen McNeil, and Beverley Skeggs (eds.),Transformations: Thinking Through Feminism (London: Routledge,2000) 33-47. For further discussion of feminism and emotion see thefinal chapter, "Feminist Attachments," which considers wonder, hope and anger as feminist emotions in: Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics ofEmotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004). [Return to text] 2ff7e9595c
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