I have been thinking about the issues that have found expression in this book for over a decade, since I first encountered the concept of intersectionality in a feminist philosophy course during my undergraduate years at the University of Alberta, and tried to square it with experiences of multiple marginalizations crosscut by privileges with which I was grappling. That course was taught by Cressida Heyes, who became my mentor and honors thesis supervisor and without whose encouragement I would not have thought it plausible that I pursue graduate studies. Dr. Heyes introduced me to feminist theory as a potentially socially transformative intellectual pursuit, and inspired me, as she did many of her other students before and since, to think wildly, argue sharply, write clearly, and teach kindly. My dissertation supervisor at McGill University, Alia Al-Saji, encouraged my diffuse interests while helping focus them into a thesis. As generous over the years with her friendship as with her patient guidance, Dr. Al-Saji expanded my intellectual horizons by introducing me to phenomenology—an orientation to philosophical thinking grounded in lived experience that forms the constitutive background of the analytical and hermeneutic arguments I attempt in these pages—and by encouraging me to recruit phenomenology toward race-critical ends; I am grateful for our marathon conversations, her sense of humor, and her ongoing support as I negotiate the vicissitudes of academic life. Marguerite Deslauriers and Hasana Sharp, my other two dissertation committee members, gave invaluable advice, posed difficult questions, and encouraged me to develop the project in its early phases with analytical acuity and hermeneutic rigor. I am thankful for the financial support I received during my doctoral studies from the Department of Philosophy, the Faculty of Arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Subsequently, I developed earlier versions of certain chapters while a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre de recherche en éthique de l’Université de Montréal under the guidance of Daniel Marc Weinstock, and at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice of the University of British Columbia supervised by Becki Ross. My colleagues at California State University, Los Angeles, particularly Ann Garry—with whom I had so many productive exchanges about intersectionality and feminism—Talia Mae Bettcher, and Mohammed Abed (in Philosophy), and Benjamin Bateman, Molly Talcott, Dionne Espinoza, and Alejandra Marchevsky (in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies), were wonderful interlocutors, inspiring educators, and supportive friends. The administrator of the Department of Philosophy, Donna Balderrama, infused our workplace with such unparalleled kindness and commitment that she redefined for me what can be humanly possible under such institutional constraints; not to mention that she saved me from certain disaster on too many occasions to count. I am grateful to the Center for Research on Genders and Sexualities at Cal State LA for awarding me a Faculty Research Fellowship, which enabled me to conduct research at San Francisco’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Historical Society, and to archivists Rebekah Kim, Marjorie Bryer, and Alex Barrows for all their work keeping alive and ensuring our access to the historical memory of LGBTQI movements and communities in that city.
I drew insight and inspiration from the people positioned as my “students” at all of the institutions at which I have been so fortunate to teach; but I truly felt that at Cal State LA I was privileged to meet people who transformed me radically and confirmed all my secret hopes about humanity. I could write an entire book on this subject, about all the things that working with students at that beleaguered public institution taught me about our capacity to struggle, to connect, to create, and to learn together. Without wishing to diminish the collective process in which we were all together involved, I would like to express my gratitude specifically to certain “students”—scholars in their own right—who generously shared with me their ideas, their interpretations, and their questions in ways that have been deeply affecting. Imran Siddiqui’s love of footnotes and scrupulously close readings easily outdoes my own; his generosity of spirit and intellect humbles me profoundly. I was inspired to research Somos Hermanas by Claudia Baltazar, who began working on her master’s thesis focusing on the “third space” feminisms of women of color who had organized in the Bay Area; Claudia’s tragic death interrupted that work and the life of a beautiful, brilliant person that I was honored to know, if all too briefly. I would also like to acknowledge the people who made up the Critical Race Feminisms seminar in spring of 2011, particularly Lisbeth Espinosa, who taught us all a great deal about the vital importance of honoring, integrating, and resisting on the basis of what she powerfully termed “the intersectionalities within”; Victor Morales, who is as resilient in his intellect as he is in his person; and Chogollah Maroufi, whose passion for learning is truly inspiring and is what I imagine makes him such an incredible teacher. The people who constituted my courses on gendered violence and who organized the public forums “Breaking the Chain of Gendered Violence through Education and Empowerment” (in 2010) and “What Is Done in the Dark Must Come to Light: Imagine an End to Gendered Violence” (in 2013) did no less than rock my world. I especially want to thank Bree Lacey, Brandon Edgar, Carlos Douglas, Christyne Taylor, Corinne Love, Diana Perez, Jillian Paul, Leonard López, Lucia Smith-Menzies, and Lysandro Valenzuela. I was honored to share safer space, mutual support, and lots of laughs with the people in The Queer Connection, for which student organization I served as faculty adviser; in every sense of these words: you know who you are. I am particularly grateful to the graduate students who did me the honor of asking me to serve as their master’s thesis adviser, and whose work informed my own: Leonard López, who wrote powerfully about “prismatic identities” in his analysis of hate crimes law in relation to the coloniality of “intraracial” homophobic violence; Andres Garza, who pressed me to think phenomenologically about issues of epistemic injustice; and Anthony Ristow, who got me thinking about the potentials and limitations of Foucault’s thought for conceptualizing “racism” (this became the subject of a reading group we organized). I would also like to express my gratitude to those people in “my” classes who pushed my pedagogical limits, challenged my assumptions, and tested, frustrated, or aggrieved me—and perhaps whom I also tested, frustrated, or aggrieved—for engaging me in a sometimes uncomfortable process of dissensus, of conflict and, sometimes, but not always, of resolution with respect to the issues under discussion. Thank-you all for your patience with me as I was—and I hope I always will be—learning how to teach.
I am grateful to collaborators, editors, anonymous reviewers, conference organizers, and audiences who helped me develop, sharpen, and refine the arguments elaborated in the pages that follow. I would like to thank Jennifer Nash, whose work on intersectionality has inspired and challenged me; together we organized a panel at the National Women’s Studies Association’s “Difficult Dialogues” conference in 2009. Given that we had titled the panel “Beyond Intersectionality?” I think we were both more than a little apprehensive when we realized that Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw was in the room. I am “Beyond Grateful” to Professor Crenshaw for inviting me to present at UCLA’s School of Law Critical Race Studies Symposium, “Intersectionality: Challenging Theory, Reframing Politics, Transforming Movements,” in 2010, and for including my article in the special issue of Signs that she coedited with Sumi Cho and Leslie McCall. The special issue editors, together with Beth Ribet and Signs managing editor Miranda Outman-Kramer, were generous and rigorous with their critical advice, helping me develop the theoretical argument about intersectionality revealing identities as coalitions in relation to social-movement history. It has been a daunting honor to write about a living thinker as brilliant as Professor Crenshaw, whose work has inspired so many to challenge cognitive and affective habits, conceptual schemas, and political ideologies based on solipsism, domination, and exclusion. Encountering Carmen Vázquez, as well as the other activists who brought Somos Hermanas to life, in the archive and through their oral histories, writing, lectures, and interviews, renewed my optimism about what is possible when we collectively confront violence in our lives and enacted in our name in ways that acknowledge and respect the interdependence of personal and social transformation. I would like to thank Namita Goswami, Maeve O’Donovan, and Lisa Yount, editors of Why Race and Gender Still Matter, in which an earlier version of chapter 3 appears; Alia Al-Saji, who edited the Feminist Philosophy section of Philosophy Compass in which part of chapter 1 appears; Linda Martín Alcoff, Mickaella Perina, and Ofelia Schutte, who honored “Basements and Intersections” with the inaugural Hypatia Diversity Essay Prize and offered helpful suggestions for its improvement prior to its publication in that journal; Jen McWeeny, Shireen Roshanravan, and Pedro DiPietro, who helped me develop my reading of María Lugones’s account of intersectionality and interlocking and intermeshed oppressions for their anthology Speaking Face to Face/Hablando Cara a Cara.
I am very thankful for the interest and faith that Alicia Christensen, acquisitions editor at University of Nebraska Press, showed in this project and for her support throughout the publication process, and to the staff in the Editorial, Design, and Production Department, particularly Assistant Manager Sabrina Stellrecht, as well as copy editor Jonathan Lawrence, for their meticulous and caring attention to the text. The anonymous reviewers who read the manuscript were generous with their criticism and immensely helpful in illuminating possible trajectories of revision; the series editors, Karen J. Leong and Andrea Smith, gave me latitude to choose which of these to pursue. Thanks to all of them, a collection of pages were alchemically transformed into a book.
These pages were written in many different places and owe their existence to many people who inspired, challenged, and cared for me as I wrote and rewrote them. In graduate school, I was surrounded by people whose intellectual curiosity and passions helped form my own: for this, and much more, I am grateful to Anna Feigenbaum, Elaine Brown, Tracey Nicholls, Florentien Verhage, Bryan Smyth, Mohamed Mehdi, Jasmine Rault, Megha Sehdev, Tamara Extian-Babiuk, Cynthia Reed, Spogmai Wassimi, Fatima Seedat, S. J. Brooks, Aziz Choudry, Jennifer Cuffe, and Allison Harrell. Thanks to Raph Beaulieu for needing no invitation to stop by; he was my always-welcome conduit to the outside world when I was in the thick of dissertation writing; and to Angel Beyde for her supportive friendship during that harried time. Jackie Kingston-Campbell’s frequent visits and letters and parcels from Novosibirsk taught me to embrace life as an adventure that knows no age. I am grateful to the people at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, especially Trish Salah, Dolores Chew, Gada Mahrouse, Viviane Namaste, Candis Steenbergen, and Deb Lunny, and to the March 8 Committee of Women of Diverse Origins, who taught me so much about coalescing against the violences of racist heteropatriarchy. For their enduring friendships, I thank Ania Dymarz, David McVea, and Adair Rounthwaite. In Los Angeles, I was fortunate to be befriended by Ben Bateman, J. P. Drury, Mohamed Abed, Talia Bettcher, Susan Forrest, Molly Talcott, and Dana Collins. I will always feel profound gratitude to Riel Dupuis-Rossi for sharing part of the journey with me, for raising my consciousness and reminding me where I stand, and with whom, and to Vilma Rossi and Phill Dupuis for welcoming me into their families. Barbara Giuliani and Silvia Burzio made me feel benvenuta in Levà. In Mytilene, I shared rakomelo, practiced yoga, or talked gender politics with Vivi Papanikola, Vicky Bathrelou, Kiki Kourtoglou, and Ismini Gatou. In Lisbon, I was lucky for the supportive friendships of Lia Viola, Ilaria Bertazzi, and Elisa Scaraggi. For their filoxenia I thank Stella Chatzipantsiou in Thessaloniki, as well as Maroula Chatzipantsiou and Eleni Melitou in Palaiokomi. For so many rousing discussions, and so much good advice, I am grateful to my dear friend Litsa Chatzivasileiou. In the singular presence of Kaiti Nalmpanti I feel at home, time and time again; hers has been an embrace that helped me to gather the scattered fragments of a self. When I wandered, quite lost, into her city, Nayrouz Abu Hatoum opened her home to me, nourished me, let me work alongside her, and helped me celebrate as this book came to fruition. Eliza Kolovou has been there for me in the hardest moments, halving sorrows, and in the happiest, doubling joys. Fellow traveler Aila Spathopoulou gives me hope about matters small and large, teaching me to trust “the flow.” Serdar Kandil’s warmth, gentleness, and generosity won me over from the first moment. The indomitable Farha Najah Hussain teaches me about keeping my heart soft while taking strong stands; her love is a salve and a gift. I am lucky to be able to count on Natalie Kouri-Towe to help me gain perspective, often knowing me better than I know myself, lovingly setting me back on my path time and time again. Morfeas, Antartissa, and Juanita were tireless companions in the writing process; one could not hope for more affectionate collaborators. Effrosyni Dagdileli sustained and nourished me in all ways through the vagaries of writing; our constant conversation profoundly shaped me. Έφη, σε ευχαριστώ για τις μικρές ζεστές πέτρες από τις αγαπημένες σου παραλίες που έβαλες στην παλάμη μου και για όλες τις λέξεις που καταλάβαμε αντάμα. Κοντά σου έμαθα πως
η γλώσσα
που χρειάζομαι
να μιλήσω
είναι η ίδια
που χρησιμοποιώ
για να αγγίζω . . . (Moraga 1983, 149, my translation)
I owe everything to my parents, my first and best teachers, Margaret Ann Foley Carastathis and Dimitris Carastathis, for their love and support, since my very beginning. Principled and forgiving, generous and exacting, in their own ways, they raised me to honor the desire to be free; through the example of their own resilience they inspire me to find strength enough to keep trying. My grandfather Yiannis Carastathis, who passed away recently, always encouraged in me a love of learning, of languages, and of solitary walks. I felt closer to things faraway thanks to the late-night transatlantic phone calls from my late godmother, Yiorgia Atsa Iordanidou. I appreciate the gentle generosity of my aunt Joan Foley Chalmers, who offered her love and reassurance from afar. I am deeply indebted to my sister, Katerina Carastathis, for always having been there. This book is humbly dedicated to her, not least of all because she taught me to love books. It is also dedicated to the memory of my grandmother Katerina Atsa Karastathi, whose namesake my sister is, who died when I was a child but whose love I have carried with me, and has carried me, all these years. I think of her every time I wash dishes, hold a heavy wooden spoon in my hand, or smell flowers.