Kendall 1
Ryan Kendall
Professor Holloway Sparks
WGS 700
18 November 2014
Rethinking Intersectionality: Making Women of Color Visible
In her essay “Intersectionality, Metaphors, and the Multiplicity of Gender,” Ann Garry rethinks intersectionality, investigating both its benefits and its limits. Garry tests her approach against María Lugones’ argument that intersectionality unhelpfully fragments women both theoretically and politically. Specifically, Garry is looking to Lugones’ essay “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System” (2007), yet as we can see in her references, Garry is also in conversation with Lugones’ “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.” What is more, Garry argues against Lugones in that Garry believes intersectionality does not necessarily have to fall prey to what Lugones identifies as a ‘logic of purity.’ Garry imaginesintersectionality as a pluralistic and inclusive framework for feminist thought. Lastly, she pairs family resemblance analysis with intersectionality in order to circumvent Lugones’ argument that different genders exist among women.
Garry asserts that feminist theorists either ask too much or too little of intersectional analyses. Those that ask too much request that intersectionality be deployed as a methodology. Garry is adamant in arguing that this is an impossible demand. Rather, intersectionality is better deployed as a framework. This is not to say that one cannot “develop methods and methodologies that support an intersectional framework,” but intersectionality’s value “can be seen in its function as a ‘framework checker’ or ‘method checker’ that provides standard that a method or methodology should meet” (Garry 830). Garry claims that feminist theorists who ask too little of intersectionality do not recognize the plethora of benefits that intersectionality has to offer. For instance, Garry advocates for an intersectionality that acknowledges privilege as well as oppression (827). This addition of privilege, as Garry would have it, advocates for heightened self-awareness and thus responsibility. This intersectionality requests that people confront our own biases and privileges. This self-awareness “enable[s] us to undertake the very hard work of understanding the implications of feminist philosophy’s Eurocentrism” (828). I sense that this speaks to Lugones’ concern about the use of colonial frameworks for sites of noncolonial communities in “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.”
Garry is incredibly careful to attend to the tropological territory designated by intersectionality. I found this to be especially useful and advantageous to her argument. Specifically, Garry calls attention to the intersectionality’s metaphoricity. Although she acknowledges that this metaphoricity may provide advantages and lend intersectionality to new imaginative possibilities, it has overall depended upon and required too much “explanation and elaboration in terms of other metaphors, images, and analogies,” all of which readily fail (831). To illustrate this point, Garry reimagines Crenshaw’s traffic intersection as a roundabout, which is more fluid and “allows us to visualize more facets of intersectionality” (832). This way we think beyond race and gender and include sexual orientation, class, etc. (832). In problematizing her own rethinking, she introduces mountains to add verticality to an all too horizontal roundabout (833). She argues, “Once we have mountains we can replace vehicles with liquids to show the ways in which some oppressions or privileges seem to blend or fuse with others” (833). What is more, “[d]ifferent liquids […] run down in different places at different altitudes into roundabouts” (833). However, Garry asserts that this metaphor cannot capture agency (833). According to Garry, it is difficult to find metaphors that can account for all the complexities that intersectionality takes on. I found this to be an important theoretical move in her analysis because, while refraining from discrediting the usefulness of metaphors, she is very careful to attend to the ways in which metaphors are inherently limited.
Garry uses Lugones to both inform her notion of intersectionality as well as to illuminate where Lugones falls short. Seemingly, Lugones is suspicious of intersectionality because it is invokes a logic of purity that “encompasses dominance, control, hierarchy, categorizing, and selves that are either unified, fragmented, or both” (834). She contends that this logic “fragments identities of women of color” (834). Garry disputes this. While Garry is persistent in her announcement that she shares the same aim as Lugones—the aim to make visible women of color—Garry holds that intersectionality can circumvent the logic of purity. She explains, “The fact that a logic of purity can use intersectional analyses of certain kinds (interlocking oppressions) does not imply that intersectionality must be part of the logic of purity” (840). She proceeds that the invocation of certain categories does not mean it is dependent upon a logic of purity. She holds that her notion of intersectionality does“not imply that categories are static or have internal homogeneity simply by using the term ‘gender’ or ‘class’” (840). Garry then argues for a family resemblance analysis that would not depend upon the logic of purity.
Garry proceeds to break down Lugones’ contention that different genders exist among women based upon Garry’s conception of a family resemblance analysis. I would like to take a second here to acknowledge that Garry doesn’t break down what family resemblance means or looks like. Rather, she focuses exclusively on what it can bring to intersectionality. I found this to be an issue because we, as readers, really have no choice but to take her word for it. So, taking her word for it, Garry argues that family resemblances would readily call attention to hierarchies of power and “the mutual construction of modern colonial power, race, and gender by pointing to the extreme differences among the characteristics of European women and colonized women” (842). She continues to say that “[t]here is no need for these women to occupy different genders” (842), and that “[c]reating a new gender for each new intersection does nothing in itself to help us explore the intersection” (843). Overall, Garry claims to support Lugones’ aims but not necessarily her methodologies or frameworks.
What I found most admirable about Garry’s work is that she is very ready to admit where her own work might be problematic. For instance, she recognizes that her approach requires an active self-consciousness. She writes, “If women from many different groups share a gender, we must constantly be vigilant in keeping dominant (for our purposes, white or Western) women de-centered, off center stage—historically, in the present, and in the future” (843). Without doing so, her conception of a pluralist, inclusive feminism would be impossible. She recognizes that there must be a constant effort to make visible women of color. Without actively working toward that, Garry sees the potential for her approach to misguidedly write over them. This is very apparently the opposite of Garry’s political aim.
Works Cited
Garry, Ann. “Intersectionality, Metaphors, and the Multiplicity of Gender.” Hypatia. Vol. 26:4. New York: Wiley on behalf of Hypatia, Inc., 2011. Print. 826-50.