"I WOULD RATHER BE A CYBORG THAN A GODDESS"

INTERSECTIONALITY, ASSEMBLAGE, AND AFFECTIVE POLITICS

Abstract

Intersectionality is thought by many feminists to be the primary rubric for theorizing difference for the past two decades, and is now a prevalent approach in some strands of queer theory (increasingly known as “queer of colour critique”). Intersectionality emerged from the struggles of second wave feminism as a crucial black feminist intervention challenging the hegemonic rubrics of race, class, and gender within predominantly white feminist frames. But, in precisely in the act of performing this intervention, it also produces an ironic reification of sexual difference as a/the foundational one that needs to be disrupted – that is to say, sexual and gender difference is understood as the constant from which there are variants. Intersectionality and assemblage are not analogous in terms of content, intent, nor utility, but they have at times been produced as somehow incompatible or even oppositional. In what follows, I offer some preliminary thoughts on the limits and possibilities of each of these and what might be gained by thinking them through and with each other. What are the strengths of each in the realms of theory, politics, organizing, legal structures, and method? Through the mapping of these two bifurcated genealogies, I offer some thoughts on the politics of feminist knowledge production – which has been driven, sometimes single-mindedly, by the mandate of intersectional analysis – to see what kinds of futures are possible for feminist theorizing.