Feminist originalism: Intersectionality and the politics of reading. (April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Nash, Jennifer C.
• Is Part Of: Feminist theory. Volume 17:Number 1(2016:Apr.)
• Page Start: 3
• Page End: 20
• Publication Date: 2016-04
• Subjects: Black feminism -- feminist theory -- history of women's studies -- intersectionality -- womanism; Feminist theory -- Periodicals; 305.4205
• DOI: 10.1177/1464700115620864
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1464-7001

Abstract

This article examines the growing body of commemorative feminist work on intersectionality – the myriad journals and books that have marked intersectionality's twentieth anniversary and celebrated the analytic's field-defining status and cross-disciplinary circulation. I argue that this commemorative scholarship is marked by its own genre conventions, including the emergence of originalism, an investment in returning to the 'inaugural' intersectional texts – namely Crenshaw's two articles (1989, 1991) – and assessing later feminist work on intersectionality by its fidelity to those texts. The article reveals that intersectional originalism is its own practice of re-reading and re-interpretation that has its own complex temporal and racial politics, and which is animated by a desire to rescue intersectionality from critique in a moment in which identity politics are increasingly suspect.