This seminar is linked to the European project MiCREATE.
This seminar is related to the previous one on ‘Decolonial Pedagogies’ and is part of a series of self-training activities – -linked to the Esbrina research group– that explore references and experiences that allow us to respond to the challenges that emerge from our relationship with young people, teachers, families and social groups. In this case, the training is generated within the framework of the MiCREATE project. One of these challenges is to introduce conceptual frameworks, which are nourished by contributions from an other onto-spistemology and other ethics, which help us to reconfigure our relationships and practices in research, teaching and beyond the university.
To achieve this, this seminar has three main purposes: a) to place ourselves from a critical position in the contributions of intersectional perspectives; b) train ourselves from a collective learning device and c) project intersectional frameworks and strategies that can be shared with the schools with which we collaborate.
The readings for the seminar
As in the previous seminar on ‘Decolonial Pedagogies’, the dynamic that we can follow is that each session is led by one or two people, who introduce the texts and pose questions and/or topics for conversation. Taking a record, which gives way to collective annotations, can complete each meeting. All this material will be in the Esbrina’s Moodle.
March 18: Sketch a genealogy of the intersectional perspective
In this first session, the proposal is to dialogue with two texts that allow us to sketch a genealogy of intersectionalities and their relationship with other social praxis.
The first is from Leïla Benhadjoudja, a professor at the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa who investigates from postcolonial and decolonial feminist theories, the sociology of racism and inter-ethnic relations. The text, from the author’s trajectory, allows us to sketch the frameworks and tensions in and from which the perspectives of intersectionalities are configured.
- Martínez Andrade (2019). Leïla Benhadjoudja La intereseccionalidad es esencialmente una praxis. No es una enunciación teórica. En Feminismos a la contra. Entre-vista al sur global. (pp.229-244). Traficante de sueños.
The second is by Itiziar Gandaria, professor at the Department of Social Psychology and Development at the University of Deusto. She participates in Munduko Emakumeak-Women of the World and in the Platform of the World March of Women in Euskal Herria. Her research interests are postcolonial and intersectional feminisms, the relationships between social movements and academia, and activist and feminist methodologies.
- Gandaria, Itziar (2017). ¿Un neologismo a la moda?: Repensar la interseccionalidad como herramienta para la articulación política feminista. Investigaciones Feministas, 8(1) 2017: 73-93.
Available at: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/INFE/article/view/54498/51190
March 25: A foundational text and another that systematizes and raises tensions
In this second session we are going to explore the foundational text on Intersectionality and another text that expands the path initially opened by Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Kimberlé Crenshaw is an American academic specializing in the field of critical race theory, and a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles and Columbia Law Schools, where she conducts research on issues of race and gender. She is especially known for coining the concept “intersectionality” in 1989. In Wikipedia it is said that “Her inspiration for the theory began while she was a university student and she realized that the gender aspect in relation to race was very underdeveloped. She realized that in the Faculty in which she studied there were classes on race and on gender issues. Women were discussed exclusively in the literature and poetry classes while the men were present in serious classes on politics and economics. ”
- Crenshaw, Kimberle (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine,Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 1989: Iss. 1, Article 8.
Available at: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8
The second article raises a contradiction: that intersectionality, the predominant way of conceptualizing the relationship between axes or systems of oppression (race, class, gender), illicitly imports the same model that it seeks to overcome, that is, the unitary model of identity.
- Carastathis, Anna. (2008). The Invisibility of Privilege: A critique of intersectional models of identity. Les ateliers de l’éthique / The Ethics Forum, 3 (2), 23–38. https://doi.org/10.7202/1044594ar
April 8: Exploring intersectionality to challenge it
In this section we will read two articles, published in non-academic digital magazines, that provide a more ‘free’ writing mode that emphasizes critical aspects in relation to intersectionality. In this direction, the first article presents five themes that contribute a critique of intersectionality from a decolonial perspective.
- Hira, Sandew (2016). Intersectionality. Decolonial International Network.
Available at: https://din.today/a-decolonial-critique-of-intersectionality/7/
The second presents three criticisms of the intersectional perspective referring to imprecise language, ideological uniformity, and radicalism.
- Gonzalez, Christian Alejandro (2018). The Illiberal Logic of Intersectionality, Quillete, May 8.
Available at: https://quillette.com/2018/05/08/illiberal-logic-intersectionality/
April 15: Explore intersectionality to expand it
Although expansion is already found in previous articles, this article looks at how debates about intersectionality allow for self-reflexivity, positionality and criticism, but also run the risk of becoming routine gestures in activist and academic settings. The objective of this article is to reflect on how intersectionality is a crucial concept for the production of feminist knowledge and, at the same time, to attend to and problematize some assumptions that are frequently repeated as obvious starting points in research on intersectionality.
- Salskov, Salla Aldrin (2020). A Critique of Our Own? On Intersectionality and “Epistemic Habits” in a Study of Racialization and Homonationalism in a Nordic Context. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 28:3, 251-265, DOI: 10.1080/08038740.2020.1789218
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2020.178921
April 22: Bringing intersectionality to school education
In the first of the articles, the authors try to understand how intersectionality issues are addressed in the literature on environmental education and sustainability (SES), focusing on how gender is discussed in relation to other social identities such as class, race, sexuality, and ability. Their analysis draws on feminist and decolonizing frameworks, and they uses intersectionality to examine how the SES literature approaches issues as interconnected.
- Maina-Okori, Naomi Mumbi ; Koushik, Jada Renee & Wilson, Alexandria (2018). Reimagining intersectionality in environmental and sustainability education: A critical literature review. The Journal of Environmental Education, 49 (4), 286-296, DOI: 10.1080/00958964.2017.1364215
In the second, colleagues from the University of Vienna who participate in MiCREATE examine how school personnel in two Austrian cities negotiate the intersecting structures of inequality in which “immigrant” students find themselves in the context of Austrian educational and integration policies. They use an intersectional approach in their analysis and conducted in-depth interviews and seven focus groups with school staff.
- Cakir, Alev; Wolter, Stella; Liepold, Mira; Sauer, Birgit (2020). Intersectional contestations – The meanings of integration of ‘migrant’ pupils in Austrian schools. ANNALES · Ser. hist. sociol. · 30 (4), 587-600. DOI 10.19233/ASHS.2020.39
Dates
March 18th, 25th
April 8th, 15th and 22nd 2021
From 16 to 18h
Organized by
