Introduction

Abstract

Theorizing Intersectionality and Sexuality explores the limitations, exclusions and possibilities of intersectional analysis at the twentieth anniversary of the first use of the term ‘intersectionality’ (Crenshaw, 1989): does such attention amount to a return to the past, as a memorable celebration of what was enabled between then and now, or does it involve an uneasy resurrection of what should be departed from? As a whole, this volume considers the continued significance and relevance of ‘intersectionality’, also reaching beyond it in pursuing future agendas, while mindful of legacies, dismissals and endurances in the circuits of academic knowledge production. Since its conception in the 1980s, ‘intersectionality’ has been subject to much theoretical debate and sometimes invoking this term in the present risks casting the debate as already passé, over and done with, where nothing useful can be added. Yet scholarly attention has returned to consider the potentials and limitations of applying ‘intersectionality’ — and to think through what else might extend or even replace such a framing (see Berger and Guidroz, 2010). At this salient moment in ‘remembering’ the formation of intersectionality, this book re-examines these political, conceptual and methodological concerns. In so doing it brings them into conversation with sexuality studies, where, arguably, ‘understanding complexities posed by intersections of different axes of differentiation is as pressing today as it has always been’ (Brah and Phoenix, 2004: 75).