2.5 Intersectionality
2.5.2 A Critical Evaluation of the Intersectionality Approach
traditions continue to enforce masculine domination in order to influence ‘ideal’ forms of contemporary representations of masculinities within CEPC. These are addressed in later chapters of this thesis.
The intersection of religion, culture and theology must not only remain important while theorising oppression of women in Africa as most scholars would advance, but also proves informative in understanding how various factors interconnect with other categories contributing to masculine construction. This requires attention especially when theorising men’s representations of ideal masculinities in an African context.
Criticisms surrounding the concept of intersectionality have focused on a number of concerns especially in the United States and in Europe (Davis 2011:43). For the purpose of this research, I will highlight only three which call for attention in seeking to extend the intersectional concept to studies of masculinity. First, the analytic attempts of using analogies and images in explaining the intersectionality approach are numerous and repeated concerns suggest that these are sometimes confusing. Nira Yuval-Davis (2006:196) for instance points at the imagery of crossroads and traffic, developed by Crenshaw (2001).26 Other imageries and metaphors used to underpin the assumptions depicting the connectedness of factors and categories are those such as ‘interlocking,’
‘overlapping,’ ‘interwoven,’ ‘indivisible,’ ‘multiple dimension,’ ‘the inseparability of factors,’ ‘mutually reinforcing,’ etc. Also, along with these images is the use of black women as prototypical intersectional subjects (see Nash 2008:4). On the one hand, I echo these concerns especially that such a wide range of imagery and metaphors could make it difficult to contextualise our understanding of intersection at varied levels. Also, this depicts intersectionality as an approach of “addition” which always remains open for
‘one more’ (religion+gender+culture+what?). However, on the other hand, I would argue that this is what makes intersectionality unique, for a researcher will always seek to find the “missing +.” The question should not be whether the idea of an intersection is the right analogy to be used, but the major issue is the propensity of this framework to embrace a variety of images in explaining its theoretical position in a diverse manner to enrich research. The underlying emphasis for me would then be to understand the focal aspect of intersectionality; that is, the constant consciousness that factors and categories
‘operate together.’
The second challenge with intersectionality emerges directly from the above discussion.
The whole imagery of identities at ‘intersections’ cannot be analysed outside of the
‘complexities of intersectionality’ which emanate from the theory itself. Nash (2008:50) explains that the difficulty of crafting a method introduced with it methodological
26 The word intersection means that one line cuts through another line, and can be used as an analogy to
denote streets crossing each other (Knudsen, 2000
<http://www.caen.iufm.fr/colloque_iartem/pdf/knudsen.pdf>). Crenshaw (2011) has revised her analogy to describe oppression of women as though happing at an intersection of crossroad over the past years in her writings. However, her initial imagery and analogy of traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions which has been taken up by many other studies is worth considering here. She points that discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars travelling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination (Crenshaw 2011:29). See also Patricia Hill Collins (1990, 1998).
challenges of complex analyses. Similarly, McCall (2005:1772) adequately argues that intersectionality introduced new methodological problems in that the complexity arises when the subject of analysis expands to include multiple dimensions of social life and categories of analysis. Ludvig contends:
The weaknesses of intersectionality become more obvious when trying to apply it to empirical analysis: its implications for empirical analysis are, on the one hand, a seemingly insurmountable complexity and, on the other, a fixed notion of differences. This is because the list of differences is endless or even seemingly indefinite. It is impossible to take into account all the differences that are significant at any given moment (2012:246).
What this reminds me is that theories do not exist to solve theoretical complexities and make praxis any simpler. In actual fact, theories only offer us a lens through which we analyse the complexities existing for the purpose of informing the best possible praxis to adopt. In this case, William Deal and Timothy Beal’s (2004:xi) observation is worth considering when they state that a theory should not be a collection of concepts and principles that either prove or dis-prove ideas and findings. They stress: “... theory is something like a pair of spectacles, that one uses to frame and focus what they are looking at, as a tool for discerning, deciphering (or interpreting) and making sense” (Deal and Beal 2004).
Third, picking up from the previous point, scholars have argued on the lack of clear defined intersectional methodology as a challenge in relation to the concept of intersectionality (see McCall 2005:1771; Shields 2008:302 and Nash 2008:4). Among the questions raised are whether intersectionality is a theory, or a perspective method? Or as still others see it, is it a ‘reading strategy for doing feminist analysis?’ How many intersections are there? Can a quantitative approach ever work from an intersectional perspective and what would that look like? (see Nash 2008:5 and Shields 2008:306).
Further, feminists have given relatively little attention to writing about the methodologies for studying intersectionality (Winker and Degele 2011:52). Nash (2008:5) observes that critics of intersectionality have not developed a rigorous method of examining multiple subject positions, highlighting how one should pay attention to the points of intersection.
This current study is not meant to address all these luring methodological questions.
However, Davis’ (2011:44) observation is helpful: “Paradoxically, precisely the vagueness
and open-endedness of ‘intersectionality’ may be the very secret to its success.” Also, among the methodological solutions that Shields (2008:307) offers is that there is clearly no one-size-fits-all methodological solution to incorporating an intersectionality perspective, and a both/and strategy seems the best way forward. Further, McCall (2005) and Winker and Degele (2011) have delineated a range of methodological premises applicable in multiple, intersecting and complex social relations which I have applied as a method of analysis in my next chapter. Before concluding, I aptly capture what underpins intersectionality for this study as relates to constructions of masculinities.
2.5.3 The Rationale Underling Intersectionality Approach for Masculinity