Title: Gender, Intersectionality, and Critical Theory - CBMW
Headings: Gender, Intersectionality, and Critical Theory
Topic: Eikon
Gender, Intersectionality, and Critical Theory
What Is Intersectionality?
Potential Conflicts
How to Respond
Footnotes:
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Content: Intersectionality recognizes that power, privilege, disadvantage, and discrimination are functions of interlocking spectrums of identity.” [ 6] “In feminist theory, intersectionality has become the predominant way of conceptualizing the relation between systems of oppression…it has become commonplace within feminist theory to claim that women’s lives are constructed by multiple, intersecting systems of oppression.” [ 7] To properly situate these claims, we turn next to contemporary critical theory, from which intersectionality emerged. Intersectionality and Critical Theory
Briefly stated, critical theory is “a complex theoretical perspective…that explores the historical, cultural, and ideological lines of authority that underlie social conditions.” [ 8] Critical theory is a broad knowledge area which has developed significantly since its origins in the ideas of Karl Marx and the Frankfurt School. From its inception, “critical theory has been primarily concerned with the elimination of oppression and the promotion of justice,” [9] with contemporary iterations of critical theory being “more sensitive to modes of domination that involve race and gender and to the complexity of lived experience than in the Frankfurt School’s original articulation of the notion.” [ 10]
Critical theory today finds its expression in a number of critical social theories such as critical race theory, feminist theory, critical pedagogy, etc. These theories analyze society through the lens of power, problematizing the social conditions that create and reify it, challenging and disrupting those who have it, and emancipating and empowering those who don’t. “ Critical social theories are those conceptual accounts of the social world that attempt to understand and explain the causes of structural domination and inequality in order to facilitate human emancipation and equity.” [ 11]
Critical scholarship unpacks the ways in which subordinate groups such as women, people of color, the poor, the differently-abled, and LGBTQ+ individuals are oppressed by dominant groups such as men, whites, the rich, the abled, and heterosexuals through hegemonic structures and ideas. “