early week reading

"Social divisions [...] involve specific power and affective relationships between actual people, acting informally and/or in their roles as agents of specific social institutions and organizations." 

The second essay in The Intersectional Approach is entitled "Intersectionality and Feminist Politics" ... which is really about as vague as you can get. The author, Nira Yuval-Davis, is a professor and acclaimed author of books on racisms, nationalisms, and identities. The phrase (or question, more like) that I took away from her essay is "additive or constitutive". Yuval-Davis argues that "each social division [...] is irreducible to other social divisions" as opposed to 'adding onto each other'. In other words: "To be black and a woman is not another way of being working class, or even a particular type of working-class person." As people 'add oppression', they conflate the "narratives of identity politics" as well as constructing identities that "render invisible experiences of the more marginal members of that specific social category and construct a homogenized 'right way' to be its member". This phenomenon parallels the exclusionary nature of the 'most oppressed' discourse. Identity should be the "individual and collective narratives" that explain who we/I are/am in this world. Yuval-Davis also helpfully defines between the two categories of intersectionality. Structural intersectionality is the way that the experience of women of color, due to their position at the intersection of race and gender, is "qualitatively different than that of white women". Political intersectionality refers to the "manner in which feminist and antiracist politics have functioned in tandem to marginalize the issue of violence against women of color". Yuval-Davis also suggests that gender should be divorced from the body and the social differences between men and women, which I am very interested in. Why is that seen as detrimental to society? How can that problem be alleviated? This would tie nicely into our discussion of language and its limitations on social progress (alternatively, how is it aiding social progress?). The essay also asserts that "recognition [through social divisions] - of social power axes, not of social identities - is of crucial political importance" because it renders them visible. I find this assertion compelling because it justifies/legitimizes the divisions in society but only if they work to help marginalized people, not exclude them.

I'm starting to think I need to define/set aside three or four things to look for in the rest of the essays. I am a little worried that just reading the essays won't result in anything (except, probably, too much information rattling around and getting lost in my head). If I read the other essays with some topics or trends or themes in mind, I might be able to create something (paper, presentation, review) at the end of the book. I will try to speak with Mrs. Lawson before this weekend to narrow down these themes/motifs.

Additionally: the next AP Euro homework reading is on gender; I will be watching to see if it can be connected to this independent study, if only as a ""historical precedent"" to a movement or thought process.