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In 2015, Nivedita Menon’s published an article on “Is Feminism about ‘Women’? A Critical View on Intersectionality from India”. The article scrutinises intersectionality as a universal policy framework, repudiating it as it undermines feminist politics in the context of Global South. Menon does not deny intersectionality as a concept but her apprehensions stem from the multiple axis framework where she argues that identities are malleable and shifting in the Global South.

Before we dive in, let us understand the history and conception of this framework. The intersectionality framework was conceived by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of critical race theory. There was a point and time in the feminist movement where it became imperative to explore and investigate the marginalisation (race, gender, class) undergone especially by black women. Crenshaw argues that “black women are sometimes excluded from feminist theory and anti-racist policy discourse because both are predicated on a discrete set of experiences that often does not accurately reflect the interaction of race and gender. (…) the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.” This begs us to ask the question which parts of these experiences “make a woman”? It is also a great call back to Beauvoir’s famous existential quote– “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”. This quote of course would have to be amended in America’s context in the quest to explore the “the point of origin” which made one a ‘black woman’.

Mary E. John, in her response to Menon’s piece surmised the need to rather expand the debate around intersectionality and critiqued Menon’s biased representation of women’s movement. John begins with arguing that references to intersectionality have been made throughout history – a point acknowledged by Crenshaw herself who is credited with establishing the framework. Different feminist scholars, especially Black feminists and feminists from the Global South, at different points of history have viewed intersectionality in the search of ‘missing’ or ‘invisible’ identities and oppressive structures. John cites the earliest example of the Black lesbian members of the feminist Combahee River Collective (1977) who “needed an identity politics precisely because they were getting lost within the simultaneous workings of race, patriarchy and heterosexuality within systems of imperialism and capitalism”. In India’s case, Babasaheb Ambedkar makes this argument in detail when discussing the failure of the Social Reforms Party in the Annihilation of Caste. He highlights how the reform made in education were confined to the needs of upper caste women, grossly failing non-upper caste women. Audre Lorde’s words from the poem in A Woman Speaks reverberate the sub-‘woman’ treatment black women go through in America – an experience shared by Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi women in the Indian subcontinent.

"I have been woman

for a long time

beware my smile

I am treacherous with my magic

and the noon’s new fury

with all your wide futures

promised

I am

woman

and not white.”

It is worth noting that developing regions had histories before they became the “Global South” – (a term often used to signify their colonial past) and have had its own structures of liberation/oppression. This of course needs careful study where the multi-axis framework can offer insight. While assessing India’s context, Menon dilutes the multi-axis to anti-imperialist struggles whilst ignoring the anti-caste movement which paralleled each other in time. Surely, marginalised women from India would find it problematic if India’s feminist moments were touted as examples that had nothing to do with them.

Menon is correct in her assessment that there is a dominance of voices from the Global North even in rights-based fora. The power of who generates knowledge that “matters” does reside in the Global North and almost every field of study wrestles with it. There is a need to claim this space and agency for scholarship emerging from the South. But indigenous communities who are geopolitically based in the North are ignored even in the memory of Southern, decolonised literature. Certainly, women are not ‘homogenous’ entities in the North either.

Moreover, the individualisation in the feminist movement is not an unfounded concern but this individualisation has not happened on the back of exploring identities with the help of the intersectionality theory. Intersectionality as a concept has been co-opted by neoliberal structures and institutions no doubt, but so has the feminist movement itself. In fact, the feminist movements were appropriated by capitalism before intersectionality was. State backed “gender mainstreaming” of policies is often accused of such appropriation. However, in the pursuit of this “collective fight” for liberation of all women that does not individualise struggle, both John and Menon treat ‘intersectionality’ as an external theory to feminism.

The biggest merit of the intersectionality theory perhaps is in identifying the layered “enablers” existing in multiple structures of oppression and how they interact with each other. It is also possible that depending upon the situation and context some structures would be overpowering and dominating the other.

The point is to assess whether fellow feminists, advocates and rights activists across the world can provide insights into societies and communities that may have shared experiences using a theory. Nonetheless, the complexities with which these lines cross, connect, intersect, interact and play off each other do make using the framework confusing.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the position of CBGA. You can reach Sakshi Rai  at sakshi@cbgaindia.org.