In Mohanty’s “Transnational Feminist Crossings”, she deconstructs the way in which the academy homogenizes the interests of marginalized women of color across the board. Specifically, within Palestine and the United States. She analyzes the way in which essentialism plays a role in feminist research. Mohanty suggests that to understand the historical relevance of colonialism is to understand it as a necessary component to the subordination of people of color. Within the context of post colonialism, structural, and intersectionality, Mohanty address the limitation of individualism when decolonizing feminism. Drawing from an intersectional feminist discourse which is a present adaption of feminist thought. The author questions, how can one be fully seen and studied as an individual and collective, without one canceling out the other. In the academy, people of color are either grouped together or their individual experience is isolated. Either way, there’s no room for both a collectivist and individualistic critique of marginalized people’s experience.
Marginalized groups like women of color are generalizations when the narrative benefits maintaining power dynamics. However, when necessary, individual experiences are also highlighted when it benefits the narrative at hand. Intersectionality is the idea that a person’s multiple identities work with or against one another to make up their entire identity. Women of color are not one-dimensional beings, they do not have singular lives, thoughts, emotions, or behaviors. Our lives are made up of overlapping characteristics that work together to make up our personhood. The necessity of intersectionality is a courtesy relayed to non-people of color because by default white folks are allowed to be and be seen as a full human being. In essence, the root of white people’s identity is intersectional, without question. There is no term to describe their full humanity, it doesn’t need to exist because it’s considered off the bat. However, the need to describe Black women’s multiple identities because they’re not considered human first. When you’re a member of a marginalized group, you’re not seen as fully human, let alone a human with multiple identities. The mere creation of intersectionality needed to be conceptualized for the sake of Black women’s humanity.
Per Kimberle Crenshaw’s original inception of intersectionality, the judge could not and did not see how a Black woman was being discriminated against twice. Intersectionality is when a person does not fit into the dominant, Eurocentric image, therefor your identity doesn’t need to be explained or justified. When you’re a white, heterosexual, able bodied, cis male, you’re automatically given the courtesy that intersectionality affords. Intersectionality should be, in an ideal world pardoned to everyone. Even when looking at the way in which systems of oppression effect people differently, in a different context, it’s assumed that people have different challenges and come from different places. Then the question is, why are systemic challenges for people of color looked at differently? In my study, intersectionality is subjective and individualized.
I magnify the singular experiences of my sisters but also connect to the experiences of black feminist scholars. In this way, intersectionality is described from the perspective of how Black women see and feel their overlapping experiences. My study does not homogenize Black women’s experiences but also does not divorce them. Like my sister Magdaline says, "its not for everybody". My study does not speak to all Black millennial women with a Twitter account.
The purpose of this study is to speak to the Black women who are intentional about the way they utilize their voices and how they choose to express them on digital platforms. I use digital platforms to express myself, commune with other Black women, and intentionally resist negative narratives about Black women. My efforts today once looked like scrapbooking as a way to hold onto and protect positive reinforcements of my black womanhood, because I did not see them in the world.
Mohanty, C., T. (2013). “Transnational Feminist Crossings: On Neoliberalism and Radical Critique”. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38(4), 967-991.