The dual subject of intersectionality: between ‘lived experience’ and ‘categories of oppression’

This article argues that there is a dual subject at stake in contemporary invocations of intersectionality: on the one hand, a subject of ‘lived experience’, a subject that ‘can be taken at its word’, on the other hand a subject that is an effect of the intersection of various axes of oppression, that is a subject that is constituted through abstractions. In dialogue with a series of Marxist critiques of intersectionality, the article investigates how and why intersectionality has given rise to a’subject of lived experience’ in order to point to some of the weaknesses of this conception of subjectivity. Thereupon, I shall introduce a distinction between two concepts of intersectionality: intersectionality as a response to a problem and intersectionality as a theory of social identity in order to argue that many of the shortcomings of contemporary intersectionality theory seem to stem from the fact that they extend what was originally a response to a contextually specific problem and a metaphor to illustrate it into a general theory of social identity. This distinction, I argue, allows us to appreciate the initial critical gesture of intersectionality while remaining critical of some implications of intersectionality as a theory and methodology.