‘Intersectionality’ – Disrupting the power of exclusion reinforced through human rights-based policymaking

In this seminar, Thandiwe Matthews will emphasize that contrary to the critique of liberal interpretations of the approach, ‘intersectionality’ as both a theory and a method can serve as a dynamic analytical lens to reveal how power and oppression are constructed, maintained and perpetuated through structural, political and representational phenomena.

She argues that centering intersectionality in human rights-based policymaking can therefore serve to disrupt relations of power beyond mere representation, toward the advancement of a society predicated on the values of human dignity and social justice, and importantly, on the terms of those most marginalized.

'Intersectionality': describing structural discrimination and exclusion

Since the term was coined in 1989 by Kimberle Crenshaw, a Black feminist lawyer based in the United States, ‘intersectionality’ has gained prominence to describe how multiple axes of structural discrimination and exclusion experienced by marginalized groups and individuals can subsequently lead to their theoretical erasure. This is largely because dominant liberal conceptions of discrimination have focused along a single categorical axis of discrimination, thereby erasing the conceptualization, identification and remediation of the interaction of race, sex, gender, age and other forms of discrimination.

At the same time, while it is acknowledged that an intersectional approach to social analyses exposes the nuances of egregious structural inequalities that pervade society, critics have questioned its value as an analytical model or theory to deconstruct social hierarchies of power. For these critics, beyond its value as an explanatory paradigm, ‘intersectionality’ is limited in tackling the social drivers of inequality outside of rights-based policy frameworks that arguably presuppose the dominance of capitalist social relations; instead, the principal investigation to understanding the roots of social inequality should be focused on dismantling the class-based organization of society, which renders individuals excluded on the basis of their identity.