Introduction: Theorizing for Change: Intersections, Transdisciplinarity, and Black Lived Experience
Introduction: Theorizing for Change: Intersections, Transdisciplinarity, and Black Lived Experience
Rather than nostalgically returning to the Combahee River Collective and discarding the academic benefits of interdisciplinarity which span the last two decades, this introduction ponders the possibility of an ethical shift towards a greater articulation of discourses and social movements while claiming that this interrelatedness should be the primary intersection. Through the essays of the collection it examines the generative conditions of theory; its possible limitations; and the methodological innovations needed when the theorization of the lived experience of black people aims at implementing lasting social change. Within the original metaphorical evocation of “traffic intersections” conjuring up the flux of ever-changing individual and collective identities and their cross-pollinization, it argues that intersectionality should not, however, be reduced to a sheer concept or to a symbol describing any subject position – a current academic trend which depoliticizes intersectionality by applying it to all, in any situation. Intersectionality is a tool; perhaps even a weapon. As such, it needs to be thought through and used by those of us for whom policies of inequality and discrimination still matter because they are an inescapable condition of our existence.
Keywords: agency, black being, blackness, critique, gender, identity, intersectionality, positionality, sexuality, theorization
Liverpool Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
