Making Middles Matter: Intersecting Intersectionality with New Materialisms

Abstract

It is fair to say that the relationship between intersectionality theories and new materialisms has been characterized by tensions. Intersectional approaches have emphasized the multi-faceted positioning of subjects in relation to the classificatory power of socially constructed identity categories. Meanwhile, feminist new materialisms have foregrounded the agency of matter and argued for the relational becoming of human bodies, subjectivities, and differences beyond predefined classifications of identity. In this article we reach beyond understanding theories of intersectionality and new materialisms as mutually oppositional or exclusive. Expanding on the efforts of several feminist theorists to consider intersectionality in increasingly processual and relational terms, we propose a way of intersecting the concept of intersectionality with new materialisms. This approach 1) foregrounds the situated emergence and relatedness of embodied subjectivities and social differences and 2) draws increasing attention to the material and other-than-human elements involved in the relational emergence of intersectional differences and power relations. Our specific contribution to considering intersectionality in terms of processes and co-constitutive relations is the concept of “the middle”, drawn mostly from Erin Manning and Brian Massumi. We examine social differences as resulting from repeated middles of relationally re-forming elements in connection to data gathered during an experimental embroidery study-circle organized for gender studies students at a Finnish university.

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