Kendall 1
Ryan Kendall
Professor Holloway Sparks
WGS 700
18 November 2014
Rethinking Intersectionality: Making Women of Color Visible
In her essay “Intersectionality, Metaphors, and the Multiplicity of Gender,” Ann
Garry rethinks intersectionality, investigating both its benefits and its limits. Garry tests
her approach against María Lugones’ argument that intersectionality unhelpfully
fragments women both theoretically and politically. Specifically, Garry is looking to
Lugones’ essay “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System” (2007), yet
as we can see in her references, Garry is also in conversation with Lugones’ “Toward a
Decolonial Feminism.” What is more, Garry argues against Lugones in that Garry
believes intersectionality does not necessarily have to fall prey to what Lugones identifies
as a ‘logic of purity.’ Garry imagines intersectionality as a pluralistic and inclusive
framework for feminist thought. Lastly, she pairs family resemblance analysis with
intersectionality in order to circumvent Lugones’ argument that different genders exist
among women.
Garry asserts that feminist theorists either ask too much or too little of
intersectional analyses. Those that ask too much request that intersectionality be deployed
as a methodology. Garry is adamant in arguing that this is an impossible demand. Rather,
intersectionality is better deployed as a framework. This is not to say that one cannot
Kendall 2
“develop methods and methodologies that support an intersectional framework,” but
intersectionality’s value “can be seen in its function as a ‘framework checker’ or ‘method
checker’ that provides standard that a method or methodology should meet” (Garry 830).
Garry claims that feminist theorists who ask too little of intersectionality do not recognize
the plethora of benefits that intersectionality has to offer. For instance, Garry advocates
for an intersectionality that acknowledges privilege as well as oppression (827). This
addition of privilege, as Garry would have it, advocates for heightened self-awareness
and thus responsibility. This intersectionality requests that people confront our own
biases and privileges. This self-awareness “enable[s] us to undertake the very hard work
of understanding the implications of feminist philosophy’s Eurocentrism” (828). I sense
that this speaks to Lugones’ concern about the use of colonial frameworks for sites of
noncolonial communities in “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.”
Garry is incredibly careful to attend to the tropological territory designated by
intersectionality. I found this to be especially useful and advantageous to her argument.
Specifically, Garry calls attention to the intersectionality’s metaphoricity. Although she
acknowledges that this metaphoricity may provide advantages and lend intersectionality
to new imaginative possibilities, it has overall depended upon and required too much
“explanation and elaboration in terms of other metaphors, images, and analogies,” all of
which readily fail (831). To illustrate this point, Garry reimagines Crenshaw’s traffic
intersection as a roundabout, which is more fluid and “allows us to visualize more facets
of intersectionality” (832). This way we think beyond race and gender and include sexual
orientation, class, etc. (832). In problematizing her own rethinking, she introduces
Kendall 3
mountains to add verticality to an all too horizontal roundabout (833). She argues, “Once
we have mountains we can replace vehicles with liquids to show the ways in which some
oppressions or privileges seem to blend or fuse with others” (833). What is more,
“[d]ifferent liquids […] run down in different places at different altitudes into
roundabouts” (833). However, Garry asserts that this metaphor cannot capture agency
(833). According to Garry, it is difficult to find metaphors that can account for all the
complexities that intersectionality takes on. I found this to be an important theoretical
move in her analysis because, while refraining from discrediting the usefulness of
metaphors, she is very careful to attend to the ways in which metaphors are inherently
limited.
Garry uses Lugones to both inform her notion of intersectionality as well as to
illuminate where Lugones falls short. Seemingly, Lugones is suspicious of
intersectionality because it is invokes a logic of purity that “encompasses dominance,
control, hierarchy, categorizing, and selves that are either unified, fragmented, or both”
(834). She contends that this logic “fragments identities of women of color” (834). Garry
disputes this. While Garry is persistent in her announcement that she shares the same aim
as Lugones—the aim to make visible women of color—Garry holds that intersectionality
can circumvent the logic of purity. She explains, “The fact that a logic of purity can use
intersectional analyses of certain kinds (interlocking oppressions) does not imply that
intersectionality must be part of the logic of purity” (840). She proceeds that the
invocation of certain categories does not mean it is dependent upon a logic of purity. She
holds that her notion of intersectionality does “not imply that categories are static or have
Kendall 4
internal homogeneity simply by using the term ‘gender’ or ‘class’” (840). Garry then
argues for a family resemblance analysis that would not depend upon the logic of purity.
Garry proceeds to break down Lugones’ contention that different genders exist
among women based upon Garry’s conception of a family resemblance analysis. I would
like to take a second here to acknowledge that Garry doesn’t break down what family
resemblance means or looks like. Rather, she focuses exclusively on what it can bring to
intersectionality. I found this to be an issue because we, as readers, really have no choice
but to take her word for it. So, taking her word for it, Garry argues that family
resemblances would readily call attention to hierarchies of power and “the mutual
construction of modern colonial power, race, and gender by pointing to the extreme
differences among the characteristics of European women and colonized women” (842).
She continues to say that “[t]here is no need for these women to occupy different
genders” (842), and that “[c]reating a new gender for each new intersection does nothing
in itself to help us explore the intersection” (843). Overall, Garry claims to support
Lugones’ aims but not necessarily her methodologies or frameworks.
What I found most admirable about Garry’s work is that she is very ready to
admit where her own work might be problematic. For instance, she recognizes that her
approach requires an active self-consciousness. She writes, “If women from many
different groups share a gender, we must constantly be vigilant in keeping dominant (for
our purposes, white or Western) women de-centered, off center stage—historically, in the
present, and in the future” (843). Without doing so, her conception of a pluralist,
Kendall 5
inclusive feminism would be impossible. She recognizes that there must be a constant
effort to make visible women of color. Without actively working toward that, Garry sees
the potential for her approach to misguidedly write over them. This is very apparently the
opposite of Garry’s political aim.
Kendall 6
Works Cited
Garry, Ann. “Intersectionality, Metaphors, and the Multiplicity of Gender.” Hypatia. Vol.
26:4. New York: Wiley on behalf of Hypatia, Inc., 2011. Print. 826-50.