Slides from a presentation of Critical Intersectional Frameworks

NWM Region “Intersectionality: What it is and why it matters”

Victorian Alcohol & Drug Association (VAADA)

October 11 2018

Please do not reproduce, circulate or upload the contents of this presentation onto open web-sources without permission from the presenter as the images and work from which they are derived are subject to copyright.

If you would like to cite the Intersectional Power Matrix Model please use these citations:

Fernando, N 2016. ‘On our way’: identities and representations of African women seeking asylum in Ireland. PhD Thesis, Cork: National University of Ireland , Chapter 2

Fernando, N 2018 ‘When’s good time to talk about Money? Financial Teachable Moments for women affected by Family Violence, Melbourne: WIRE

WHAT DIFFERENCES MATTER MOST? WHEN? HOW? FOR WHOM?

Intersectional Frameworks

Nilmini Fernando PhD

Independent Scholar/Educator/Researcher WIRE Women’s Information Exchangenfernando@wire.org.au nilminifernando1@gmail.com

WHAT IS INTERSECTIONALITY?

Concept

Term

Tool

Framework

Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity of social inequalities.

People’s lives and the organization of power in a given society, are shaped not by a single ‘axis’ of division, but many that work together and influence each other.

Analysis/Understanding complexity, nuance, power /powerlessness of social positioning or locations, structures, stratification.

AIMS OF INTERSECTIONALITY

Understand how difference are made, how theymatter, to whom?

Social Locations

Carve space for more agency

Strategize by looking at power

A tool of race/gender/class LITERACY- how weread bodies, situations

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW4 Phases of Encounter between West and the‘rest’

SlaverySettler/ColonizationPost-War MigrationGlobalizationWar on TerrorRefugeeism

Settler colonial countries like Australia violentlyproduced the ‘other’, and made whiteness thecentral construct. Aboriginal peoples were thefirst other, Aboriginal women doubly otheredthrough race/gender. New “other others” areconstantly re-created with different bodies, inhyperdiverse societies. ‘Asylum seekers’ are thenewest “other”.

How has “othering” shifted over the centuries?

DifferencesHierarchies of human-ness

FEMINISM“DISAPPEARED BLACK

FEMALE BODIES”

ABOLITION Soujourner Truth&

SUFFRAGE White anti-abolitionist women fought for white women’s vote ahead of black men.

CIVIL RIGHTS : Anti-race discrimination left out gender.

2ND WAVE FEMINISM: Left out race

By leaving the bodies of these women out, some bodies- or combinations of bodies-become constituted or ‘marked’ and ‘read’ as the norm. Other bodies have been marked as ‘other’.

1851 Soujourner Truth Women’s Convention, Akron Ohio

1977 Combahee River Collective named “race/class/gender/sexual orientation/ability”

1982 All the women are white, all the blacks are men- some of us are brave: Black Women’s Studies Gloria T Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, Barbara Smith

1989 Kimberley Crenshaw Academia/Law

OTHERING: relies on differences held against normative.

VISIBLE differences matter most

IDENTITIES ARE MADE AND RE-MADE and rely on previous layers.We ‘re-cognize’ or ‘know again,’ according to what has gone before. So, context is key.

FRAMEWORK OF RACE/GENDER/CLASS LITERACY: How we read bodies, situations of inclusion/exclusion, access to rights/services

PARADIGM CHANGE: an opportunity to direct it critically not simply dress it in different clothes. Pour new wine into old bottles

This representation erases black female bodies and all white bodies. It ‘disappears’ race/gender/ differences between black men and women, all white privileges and other privileges enjoyed by people in the seats (e.g. able bodied, class)

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT? IDENTITY/POWER

What we call ‘identities’ are not objects but processes constituted in and through power relations.

Privileges/penalties in relations to power, structures, context

If impacts how we think about, feel about, act about differences.

Differences are being constructed that areharmful for some and benefit others.

INTERSECTIONALITY IN 21ST CENTURY CONDITIONSANALYZE THIS!!!

Ask: What cultural/political/ racist/gendered work is being done by this representation? What social locations, power, status are being denied to Serena and Naomi? How has white patriarchal supremacist thinking been re-constructed through debates that followed?

WHAT RACE/GENDER MEANINGS HAVE BEEN MADE AND RE-MADE IN THE AUSTRALIAN CONTEXT?

2018

2016

Terra Nullius- ‘they weredying anyway’

Purity: Black motherhood/bodies/sexuality are dirty, impure

Cult of black female domesticity/servility versus white female benevolence

CORE IDEAS OF INTERSECTIONAL FRAMEWORKS

1.SOCIAL INEQUALITY

2.POWER RELATIONS: Intersectional frameworks analyze and understand power relations via intersections of race/class/gender

age/disability/ethnicity/nation/religion and also across

POWER DOMAINS: Structural, Disciplinary, Cultural, Interpersonal

3.RELATIONAL: Not either/or binary thinking but both/and. Opens up thinking space and political possibilities

4.CONTEXTUALIZED: Specific historical, political, intellectual, contexts shape what we think and do. Ground intersectionality in the Australian= settler colonialism

5.COMPLEXITY: Cannot produce a neat tool- not easy for everybody to handle, so people try to simplify and reach for a single model…That doesn’t work, and “undoes It”

6.SOCIAL JUSTICE: Challenges the notion that we have gender equality, race isn't a problem, there is no discrimination

WHAT IS MY LOCATION?

I prefer to talk about ‘bodies’ not identities and locations.

Look at powers that keep those bodies in place through ideologies of race/class/gender.

• Who is the ‘we’?

• Where am I located in this ‘we’?

• What power/privilege have I got?

• What penalties might my colleagues/clients be paying?

• Applies to everybody… but why are some intersections and some bodies more harmful?

KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT A SITUATION

Which bodies are we talking about? (not identities)

Where are they located?

What work are they doing? (physical labor nursing homes, cultural labor)

What powers are preventing their mobility form that location? Healing? Recovering? Progressing?

Accessing resources? Rights?

What to do about it? How to recognize it?

Why can my relationships look like? Relational (interpersonal and contextual) rather than transactional connections with people?

What are my hopes for intersectionality? What do I want it to do? What can it do that we have already not doing?

WHAT’S POWER GOT TO DO WITH IT?

.

INTERSECTIONALITY: PUT THE CLIENT AT THE CENTER WHAT INTERLOCKING POWERS ARE OBSTRUCTING THEIR

PROGRESS? AGENCY?

#ANROWSconf2018

STRUCTURAL POWER

CULTURAL POWER

DISCIPLINARYPOWER

INTERPERSONALPOWER/AGENCY

Intersectional Barriers:Race/class/Indigineity/ Ability/Gender expression/sexual orientation/

Silencing. Gender norms.Sanctioned sexist myths & misogyny. Attitudes/Beliefsgender/race/class biasIntersectional differencesThe patriarchal “bro code”Religious beliefs

“Soft power” Services/ Agencies “manage” oppression.Can control and disempower via bureaucracy and eligibility criteria.Are themselves controlled and regulatedEducationResearch priorities dictate funding

Top-down, “hard power” The LawPolice CourtsEconomic/Welfare policyImmigration

Model based on Hill Collins (2000) Matrix of Domination developed by N Fernando (2016, 2018). Subject to copyright.Please do not reproduce without permission from the author.

INTERLOCKING POWERS: MS DHU

Structural Power

DV laws were supposed to protect her but State Laws allowed her to be arrested for old fines. Judicial Power=White Colonial patriarchal power. Refusal of “evidence” from her or family- racism/sexism Police custody: (Indigenous deaths)

Cultural Stereotypes- drug user, “faking” lying, unbelievable, ungrievable, can’t feel pain, deserves to be punished/beaten/suffer.White patriarchial Power Refusal by police of “evidence” their own, or from family-racism/sexism Discliplinary Power

Organise, manage, enact structural power.

Police officersHealth: doctors, nurses, bystandersAmbulance driver

Ms Dhu’s Interpersonal Power was completely dominated by interlocking Structural, Cultural, and Disciplinary powers. She couldn’t survive and paid the penalty- death. These powers rely on one another, operate together.

ACTIVITY 1

IN MY SETTING:

Think of an Issue, incident, frustration

Identify and name the forms of power

What is the role of structural power? disciplinary power?

How does it impact on my interpersonal power? Power of workers? Clients?

ACTIVITY 2

If we were to create a perfect service what would it look like?

Imagine: What would a better element of the service?

How are am I as a manager disempowered/empowered through all the powers that are around?

How can I change that?

What steps could be taken to get there?

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ahmed, S (2000) Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality, London: Routledge.

Brah, A. & Phoenix, A. (2004). Ain’t I a Woman? Revisiting Intersectionality Journal of International Women's Studies, 5(3): 75-86

Carby, H. (1985). 'On the Threshold of Woman's Era: Lynching, Empire, and Sexuality in Black Feminist Theory'. Critical Inquiry, 12 (1): 262-277

Collins, PH (2000). Black Feminist Thought : Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, London: Routledge.

Collins, PH and Bilge, S. (2016) Intersectionality: Key Concepts, London: Polity.

Conor, L (2013) ‘The ‘Lubra’ Type in Australian Imaginings of the Aboriginal Woman from 1836–1973’Gender & History, Vol.25 No.2 August 2013, pp. 230–25

Crenshaw, K.1991. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity, politics, and violence against women of colour. Stanford Law Review, 436, 1241−1299.

Fernando, N (2016). ‘On our way’: identities and representations of African women seeking asylum in Ireland. PhD Thesis, Cork: National University of Ireland (Critique of ‘undoing’ Intersectionality Chapter 2)

Fernando, N (2018) ‘When’s good time to talk about Money? Financial Teachable Moments for women affected by Family Violence,Melbourne: WIRE

Hall, S. (1997) The Spectacle of the 'Other'. In: Hall, S. (ed.) Representation: Cultural

Mc Clintock, A. 1995. Imperial Leather. London: Routledge.

Moreton-Robinson, A 2000, Talkin’ up to the White Woman, Indigenous Women and Feminism, University of Queensland Press, Queensland.