Roundtable: Intersectionality, Part 2

John Clute

Agendas are normally a bit bait and switch, though: what we’re sold is always better than what we get. And what we get becomes a habit: this is part of Disappointment Management on the part of our owners.

Jeffrey Ford

In relation to the pursuit we’re discussing, how can agendas be sold when it’s you yourself who are determining what agenda of ideas you’d like to utilize in investigating a given text?  They can be dismissed as easily as conceived of as can any insights rendered from their application.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that they would or should be.  The danger of prescription here is all in the mind of the user.  This seems like an intellectual exercise that could render interesting insights not an adherence to a dogma.  Intersectionality has no hand to hold a gun to your head.

John Clute

I do think that much of our autonomy of choice of paths or applications to follow is so conditioned by the (what?) Late International Capitalism Thingee that yes our paths, our gaze, are corrupted because we are fed poison swill from the cradle, everyone here excepted, me especially. . . .

Jeffrey Ford

Living in the U.S., I get my recommended daily dose of poison swill.  Something congress can agree on.  I like to consider the alternatives, though, from time to time and see what possibilities they open up.  I appreciate all your responses.

Cecelia Holland

We all work to contravene the swill. That’s our job. Truth is our job.

Peter Straub

Yep, but the old swill gets pretty thick and deep sometimes. What we’re calling intersectionality is or ought to be a technique for seeing through it & resisting its inertia, its complacency, of course for men, women, people of every sort of race, given imagination, intelligence, and good will. Marginalization isn’t always visible, I almost hesitate to add. Trauma and damage provide their own frames and lenses, which I think almost automatically question, deny, and undercut the point of view of the entitled, in our case, as we like to say, white middleclass males, especially those over 50. We can tell those truths, too.

Jeffrey Ford

I absolutely agree.  The tool itself is benign and its use offers potential benefit, but if you use it as a club it denies any benefit.