Anna Carastathis

Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research
  •  54
    Fanon and the Decolonization of Philosophy
    with Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, Nigel C. Gibson, Lewis R. Gordon, Peter Gratton, Ferit Güven, Mireille Fanon Mendès-France, Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, Olúfémi Táíwò, Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, Chloë Taylor, and Sokthan Yeng
    Lexington Books. 2010.
    The essays in Fanon and the Decolonization of Philosophy all trace different aspects of the mutually supporting histories of philosophical thought and colonial politics in order to suggest ways that we might decolonize our thinking. From psychology to education, to economic and legal structures, the contributors interrogate the interrelation of colonization and philosophy in order to articulate a Fanon-inspired vision of social justice. This project is endorsed by his daughter, Mireille Fanon-Me…Read more
  •  99
    A Phenomenology of Fetishism
    International Studies in Philosophy 39 (2): 17-33. 2007.
  •  113
    Invited book review of _Translocational belongings: intersectional dilemmas and social inequalities_, by Floya Anthias.
  •  115
  • Review of "Foucault's Futures: A Critique of Reproductive Reason" by Penelope Deutscher (review)
    Apa Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy 18 (1): 15-18. 2019.
    Penelope Deutscher’s book, "Foucault’s Futures: A Critique of Reproductive Reason" engages with the recent interest in reproduction, futurity, failure, and negativity in queer theory, but also the historical and ongoing investments in the concept of reproduction in feminist theory as well as (US) social movements. "Foucault’s Futures" troubles the forms of subjectivation presupposed by “reproductive rights” from a feminist perspective, exploring the “contiguity” between reproductive reason and b…Read more
  •  2
    This chapter examines María Lugones’s germane and insightful attempt to theorize “intermeshed oppressions,” which, she argues, have been (mis)represented in women of color feminisms by the concepts of “interlocking systems of oppression” and, more recently, “intersectionality.” The latter, intersectionality, introduced by Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw as a metaphor (1989) and as a “provisional concept” (1991), has become the predominant way of referencing the mutual con…Read more
  • What does it mean when calls to reconciliation come from dominant social groups? Whom do these calls address? What effects do they have? I take up these questions through a case study of the public discourse on “reasonable accommodation” in Québec. When the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences concluded its tour of the regions and cities of Québec and, in the spring of 2008, the commissioners (philosopher Charles Taylor and sociologist Gérard Bouchar…Read more
  •  1
    Keyword: Interlocking Systems of Oppression
    In Nelson M. Rodriguez, Wayne J. Martino, Jennifer C. Ingrey & Edward Brockenbrough (eds.), Critical Concepts in Queer Studies and Education: An International Guide for the Twenty-First Century. pp. 161-172. 2016.
    The concept of “interlocking systems of oppression”—a precursor to “intersectionality”— was introduced in a social movement context by the Combahee River Collective (CRC) in pamphlet form in 1977. Addressing Black lesbians’ and feminists’ experiences of invisibility within white male-dominated New Left and socialist politics, male-dominated civil rights, Black nationalist, and Black radical organizing, and white-dominated women’s liberation and lesbian feminist movements, the CRC argues for an “…Read more
  •  51
    Reproducing Refugees: Photographia of a Crisis
    with Myrto Tsilimpounidi
    Rowman and Littlefield International. 2020.
    Since 2015, the ‘refugee crisis’ is possibly the most photographed humanitarian crisis in history. Photographs taken, for instance, in Lesvos, Greece, and Bodrum, Turkey, were instrumental in generating waves of public support for, and populist opposition to “welcoming refugees” in Europe. But photographs do not circulate in a vacuum; this book explores the visual economy of the ‘refugee crisis,’ showing how the reproduction of images is structured by, and secures hierarchies of gender, sexualit…Read more
  • Hotspots of Resistance in a Bordered Reality
    with Aila Spathopoulou
    Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 38 (2). 2020.
    In this paper, we examine how bordered reality is being imposed and resisted in the context of where we are placed right now, 'Greece'. Drawing on ethnographic research and discourse analysis, conducted in Lesvos, Samos, and Athens (from March to September 2016), we examine how resistance to a bordered reality took place, as islands in the north Aegean, as well as Greek and European territories, were being remapped according to the logic of the hotspot. We approach this process methodologically …Read more
  •  1
    "Racism" versus "Intersectionality"? Significations of Interwoven Oppressions in Greek LGBTQ+ Discourses
    Feminist Critique: East European Journal of Feminist and Queer Studies 1 (3). 2019.
    This paper seeks to make “racism” strange, by exploring its invocation in the sociolinguistic context of LGBTQI+ activism in Greece, where it is used in ways that may be jarring to anglophone readers. In my ongoing research on the conceptualisation of interwoven oppressions in Greek social movement contexts, I have been interested in understanding how the widespread use of the term “racism” as a superordinate category to reference forms of oppression not only based on “race,” “ethnicity,” and “c…Read more
  • Methodological Heteronormativity and the 'Refugee Crisis'
    with Myrto Tsilimpounidi
    Feminist Media Studies 18 (6): 1120-1123. 2018.
    All migration politics are reproductive politics. The nation-state project of controlling migration secures the racialised demographics of the nation, understood as a reproducible fact of the social and human body, determining who is differentially included, who is excluded, and who is exalted. In this commentary, we put forward a provocation about methodological heteronormativity and its omnipresence in the discourse surrounding the so-called “refugee crisis.” By methodological heteronormativit…Read more
  • Experts, Refugees, and Radicals: Borders and Orders in the Hotspot of Crisis
    with Myrto Tsilimpounidi
    Theory in Action 11 (4): 1-21. 2018.
    In July 2016, we participated in a conference in Lesvos (Greece) on borders, migration, and the refugee crisis. The Crossing Borders conference was framed in contrast with the ad-hoc humanitarianism that was being implemented, to the extent that it seemed to offer an opportunity to think about the refugee crisis, militarism, and austerity capitalism in systemic terms. This paper is based on an intervention we staged in the closing panel of the Crossing Borders conference, where we read a stateme…Read more
  •  7
    Introduction: Intersectional Feminist Interventions in the 'Refugee Crisis'
    with Natalie Kouri-Towe, Gada Mahrouse, and Leila Whitley
    Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees/Revue Canadienne Sur les Réfugiés 34 (1): 3-15. 2018.
    While the declared global “refugee crisis” has received considerable scholarly attention, little of it has focused on the intersecting dynamics of oppression, discrimination, violence, and subjugation. Introducing the special issue, this article defines feminist “intersectionality” as a research framework and a no-borders activist orientation in transnational and anti-national solidarity with people displaced by war, capitalism, and reproductive heteronormativity, encountering militarized nation…Read more
  • Crisis, What Crisis? Immigrants, Refugees, and Invisible Struggles
    with Myrto Tsilimpounidi and Aila Spathopoulou
    Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees/Revue Canadienne Sur les Réfugiés 34 (1): 29-38. 2018.
    Different evocations of “crisis” create distinct categories that in turn evoke certain social reactions. Post-2008, Greece became the epicentre of the “financial crisis”; simultaneously, since 2015 with the advent of the “refugee crisis,” it became the “hotspot of Europe.” What are the different vocabularies of crisis? Moreover, how have both representations of crisis facilitated humanitarian crises to become phenomena for European and transnational institutional management? What are the hegemon…Read more
  • The 'Refugee Crisis' From Athens to Lesvos and Back: A Dialogical Account
    with Myrto Tsilimpounidi
    Slovak Ethnology 65 (4): 404-419. 2017.
    "Our grandparents, refugees; Our parents, immigrants; We, racists?" The slogan that prefaces the paper provides the theoretical caveat for the tensions, limitations, and contradictions of academic discourses in conjuring the daily realities of the era of the 'refugee crisis' in Greece. This paper has the form of a dialogue between a visual sociologist (Myrto) and a political theorist (Anna) who investigate different forms of the ways the 'refugee crisis' is changing the socio-political landsca…Read more
  • [Abstract in English follows] Το παρόν άρθρο πραγματεύεται την ατμοσφαιρική εννοιολόγηση της έμφυλης-φυλετικοποιημένης βίας, η οποία συνδέεται με τη μαύρη φεμινιστική σκέψη με την ύπαρξη και λειτουργία πολλαπλών, συνυφασμένων συστημάτων καταπίεσης. Παρουσιάζει μια διαθεματική προσέγγιση η οποία αποφεύγει την απομόνωση περιστατικών βίας από τις δομές, τους θεσμούς, τις υλικές, συναισθηματικές και αναπαραστατικές οικονομίες στο εσωτερικό των οποίων λαμβάνει χώρα η διαπροσωπική βία. Έπειτα, το άρθρ…Read more
  • This encyclopedia entry focuses primarily on Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s theoretical contributions, but also discusses how through her activism, intersectionality – as a framework or an analytic sensibility for making visible the sociolegal invisibility of women of color (and multiply oppressed social groups more generally) – has become praxis, revealing how Black women and other women of color fall “through the cracks” of mutually exclusive anti-racist and feminist discourses or, rather, are …Read more
  • 'Gender is the first terrorist': Homophobic and Transphobic Violence in Greece
    Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies 39 (2): 265-296. 2018.
    In the summer and autumn of 2015, I met with activists in Athens and Thessaloniki, with the aim of collaboratively producing a conceptual mapping of LGBTQ social movement discourses. My point of entry was the use and signification of “racism” in LGBTQ discourses (and more generally in common parlance in Greek) as a superordinate or “umbrella” concept that includes “homophobic” and “transphobic” but also “misogynist,” “ageist,” “ableist,” and class- or status-based prejudice, discrimination, and …Read more
  • Nesting Crises
    Women's Studies International Forum 68 142-148. 2018.
    Since the declaration of financial crisis in 2008, and the imposition of austerity measures in 2011, Greece has become an epicentre—or a “laboratory”—of multiple, successively declared crises, including the humanitarian crisis induced by the devastating effects of neoliberal structural adjustment policies. In this paper, I approach the explosion of crisis discourse as a medium for ideological negotiations of nation-state borders in relation to a continental project of securitisation. I suggest t…Read more
  •  2
    Despite a “spatial imaginary” which constructs Europe as a location of sexual and gender freedom (Rao, 2014), presently, twenty countries in Europe require sterilisation in order to legally recognise transgender people’s gender identities, including four of the seven countries in the INFERCIT study: Greece, Italy, Turkey, and Cyprus (but not Spain, which since 2007 does not require sterilisation for gender identity recognition [see Platero, 2008]. In Bulgaria and Lebanon no gender identity recog…Read more
  •  11
    In this paper, I examine the friction between xenophobic discourses on migration and the crisis caused by the politics of austerity in Greece. On the one hand, an ‘excessive’ influx of migration is managed through violent means by the state and the para-state; on the other, a ‘scarcity’ of domestic resources is blamed for a ‘rise’ in racist attitudes, and the political ascent of a fascist movement-cum-parliamentary party, Χρυσή Αυγή (Golden Dawn). ‘Crisis’ is said to give rise to ‘austerity’—and…Read more
  • Is Hellenism an Orientalism? Reflections on the Boundaries of 'Europe' in an Age of Austerity
    Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Journal 1 (10). 2014.
    My point of departure is Said’s rejection of the idea of an “Orientalist” Hellenism. What might it mean to argue that Orientalism characterizes “intra-European” cultural politics, specifically the colonial geography of western Europe vis-à-vis its “subaltern” Others? Contra Said, I argue that the function of Hellenism in constituting both the fantasy of Europe and western hegemony has an Orientalist structure. I explore the cultural underpinnings of Greece’s relation to “Europe” in Hellenistic …Read more
  •  154
    It has become commonplace within feminist theory to claim that women’s lives are constructed by multiple, intersecting systems of oppression. In this thesis, I challenge the consensus that oppression is aptly captured by the theoretical model of “intersectionality.” While intersectionality originates in Black feminist thought as a purposive intervention into US antidiscrimination law, it has been detached from that context and harnessed to different representational aims. For instance, it is oft…Read more
  •  14
    Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America (review)
    Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 16 (1): 250-256. 2012.
  •  52
    Reinvigorating Intersectionality as a Provisional Concept
    In Namita Goswami, Maeve O'Donovan & Lisa Yount (eds.), Why Race and Gender Still Matter: An Intersectional Approach, Pickering & Chatto. pp. 59-70. 2014.
    Challenging the triumphal narrative of ‘political completion’ that surrounds intersectionality--as ‘the’ way to theorize the relationship among systems of oppression--and which helps to cement the impression of mainstream feminism’s arrival at a postracial moment, I argue we should instead approach intersectionality as a ‘provisional concept’ which disorients entrenched essentialist cognitive habits. Rather than assume that ‘intersectionality’ has a stable, positive definition, I suggest interse…Read more
  •  17
    Fortunes of Fraser (review)
    Radical Philosophy Review 17 (2): 493-497. 2014.
    In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the review: "Fortunes of Feminism" is a collection of essays authored by Nancy Fraser between 1985 and 2010 and prefaced by a narrative about the rise, decline, and potential resurgence of “second-wave socialist feminism.” Divided into three corresponding parts (“Feminism Insurgent,” “Feminism Tamed,” and “Feminism Resurgent?”) it contains some of Fraser’s best known essays, which, although admittedly “not written with [the] aim” of tracing historic…Read more
  •  82
    Fanon on Turtle Island: Revisiting the Question of Violence
    In Elizabeth A. Hoppe & Tracey Nicholls (eds.), Fanon and the Decolonization of Philosophy, Lexington (rowman & Littlefield). pp. 77. 2010.
    In this chapter, I explore the role of violence in colonial rule and its role in decolonization struggle by posing the question, “what is alive in Fanon’s thought?” What can Fanon tell us about white settler state power and Fourth World decolonization struggles? I explore the relevance of Fanon’s account to the ongoing colonial situation on the northern part of Anówara Kawennote (Turtle Island), occupied by Canada. In this analysis, I am informed by Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) political philosopher T…Read more
  •  779
    The Concept of Intersectionality in Feminist Theory
    Philosophy Compass 9 (5): 304-314. 2014.
    In feminist theory, intersectionality has become the predominant way of conceptualizing the relation between systems of oppression which construct our multiple identities and our social locations in hierarchies of power and privilege. The aim of this essay is to clarify the origins of intersectionality as a metaphor, and its theorization as a provisional concept in Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s work, followed by its uptake and mainstreaming as a paradigm by feminist theorists in a period marked b…Read more