Feminism and the political economy of representation : intersectionality, invisibility and embodiment

It has become commonplace within feminist theory to claim that women's lives are constructed by multiple, intersecting systems of oppression. In this thesis, l challenge the consensus that oppression is aptly captured by the theoretical model of "intersectionality." While intersectionality originates in Black feminist thought as a purposive intervention into US antidiscrimination law, it has been detached from that context and harnessed to different representational aims. For instance, it is often asserted that intersectionality enables a representational politics that overcomes legacies of exclusion within hegemonic Anglo-American feminism. largue that intersectionality reinscribes the political exclusion of racialized women as a feature of their embodied identities. That is, it locates the failure of political representation in the "complex" identities of "intersectional" subjects, who are constructed as unrepresentable in terms of "race" or "gender" alone. Further, largue that intersectionality fails to supplant race- and class-privileged women as the normative subjects of feminist theory and politics. [...]Dans la théorie féministe, l'énoncé selon lequel la vie des femmes est structurée par de multiples systèmes d'oppression qui se croisent est devenu un lieu commun. La présente thèse conteste l'accord général que le modèle théorique connu comme « l'intersectionalité » explique adéquatement l'oppression. Alors que l'intersectionalité a ses origines dans le féminisme noir comme intervention spécifique dans la loi antidiscriminatoire des États-Unis, elle a depuis été arrachée à ce contexte et consacrée à d'autres buts. Par exemple, on affirme souvent que l'intersectionalité permettrait une politique de représentation qui surmonte l'héritage d'exclusion du féminisme hégémonique anglo-américain. Je soutiens que l'intersectionalité réinscrit l'exclusion politique des femmes racialisées, cette fois comme caractéristique de leurs identités incarnés.[...