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3485Identity Categories as Potential CoalitionsSigns 38 (4): 941-965. 2013.Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw ends her landmark essay “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color” with a normative claim about coalitions. She suggests that we should reconceptualize identity groups as “in fact coalitions,” or at least as “potential coalitions waiting to be formed.” In this essay, I explore this largely overlooked claim by combining philosophical analysis with archival research I conducted at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transg…Read more
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814The Concept of Intersectionality in Feminist TheoryPhilosophy 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
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417Ladelle McWhorter, Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America (review)Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 16 (1): 250-256. 2012.In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the review: "For those familiar with McWhorter’s work, the publication of "Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America" was long awaited. I had en-countered an early form of the argument McWhorter rehearses in thisbook in an article she published in 2004 in "Hypatia." At that time, it was one of very few published critical engagements with the intersectional model of oppression. It had come to seem to me that, as the model became “mainstreamed”—th…Read more
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158It 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
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147‘BANISH THOSE OTHER BORDERS’: reframing concepts, coalescing (trans)feminisms (review)Identities 1-7. 2022.Invited book review of _Translocational belongings: intersectional dilemmas and social inequalities_, by Floya Anthias.
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146So many bordered gazes: Black Mediterranean geographies of/against anti-Black representations in/by Fortress EuropeGeographica Helvetica 77 (2): 231-237. 2022.Commentary on Camilla Hawthorne's "Black Mediterranean Geographies."
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87Fanon on Turtle Island: Revisiting the Question of ViolenceIn 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
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87Basements and IntersectionsHypatia 28 (4): 698-715. 2013.In this paper, I revisit Kimberlé Crenshaw's argument in “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” (1989) to recover a companion metaphor that has been largely forgotten in the “mainstreaming” of intersectionality in (white-dominated) feminist theory. In addition to the now-famous intersection metaphor, Crenshaw offers the basement metaphor to show how—by privileging monistic, mutually exclusive, and analogically constituted categories of “race” and “sex” tethered, respectively, to masc…Read more
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85Intersectionality: Origins, Contestations, HorizonsUniversity of Nebraska Press. 2016.This book intervenes in the field of intersectionality studies: the integrative examination of the effects of racial, gendered, and class power on people’s lives. While “intersectionality” circulates as a buzzword, Anna Carastathis joins other critical voices to urge a more careful reading. Challenging the narratives of arrival that surround it, Carastathis argues that intersectionality is a horizon, illuminating ways of thinking that have yet to be realized; consequently, calls to “go beyond” i…Read more
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61Reproducing Refugees: Photographia of a CrisisRowman 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
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60Fanon and the Decolonization of PhilosophyLexington 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
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52Reinvigorating Intersectionality as a Provisional ConceptIn 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
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48Material Feminisms (review)Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 13 (1): 141-143. 2009.In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the review: "The ambitious project of "Material Feminisms" is to inaugurate a 'materialist turn' in feminist theory. Reacting to the 'linguistic turn' effected by poststructuralist feminist thought, this voluminous collection brings together a number of feminist luminaries to think through the possibilities for a 'new settlement': a new approach to theorising the interactions and 'intra-actions' between nature and culture, materiality and significat…Read more
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30Review of George Yancy, ed., "Reframing the Practice of Philosophy: Bodies of Color, Bodies of Knowledge" (review)Philosophy in Review 34 (1-2): 17-20. 2014.In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the review: "In 1995, Leonard Harris published an article for which he received death threats, exposing the white supremacist underpinnings of institutionalized philosophy in the United States: “There are those [...] who doubt that the Ku Klux Klan created American Philosophy [...] However, even without [that] belief [...] there are reasons to think that American Philosophy is compatible with the wishes of the Klan” (Proceedings and Addresses of the…Read more
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22Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America (review)Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 16 (1): 250-256. 2012.
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21Fortunes 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
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19The Politics of Austerity and the Affective Economy of Hostility: Racialised Gendered Violence and Crises of Belonging in GreeceFeminist Review 109 (1): 73-95. 2015.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
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7Introduction: Intersectional Feminist Interventions in the 'Refugee Crisis'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
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2Compulsory Sterilisation of Transgender People as Gendered ViolenceIn Venetia Kantsa, Lina Papadopoulou & Giulia Zanini (eds.), (In)Fertile Citizens: Anthropological and Legal Challenges of Assisted Reproduction Technologies. pp. 79-92. 2015.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
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2Beyond the "Logic of Purity": "Post-Post-Intersectional" Glimpses in Decolonial FeminismIn Pedro J. DiPietro, Jennifer McWeeny & Shireen Roshanravan (eds.), Speaking Face to Face/Hablando Cara a Cara: The Visionary Philosophy of María Lugones, Suny Press. 2019.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
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1Keyword: Interlocking Systems of OppressionIn 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
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1"Racism" versus "Intersectionality"? Significations of Interwoven Oppressions in Greek LGBTQ+ DiscoursesFeminist 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
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Crisis, What Crisis? Immigrants, Refugees, and Invisible StrugglesRefuge: 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
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Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (encyclopedia entry)In M. Sellers & S. Kirste (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. pp. 1-5. 2018.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
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The Nonperformativity of Reconciliation: The Case of "Reasonable Accommodation" in QuébecIn Pauline Wakeham & Jennifer Henderson (eds.), Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress, University of Toronto Press. pp. 236-260. 2013.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
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Hotspots of Resistance in a Bordered RealityEnvironment 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
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Η ατμοσφαιρικότητα της βίας υπό συνθήκες συνυφασμένων κρίσεωνFeministiqa 1 (1): 6-15. 2018.[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
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Experts, Refugees, and Radicals: Borders and Orders in the Hotspot of CrisisTheory 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
Anna Carastathis
Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research
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Feminist Autonomous Centre for ResearchCo-director