Introduction
Addressing the objective of this academic investigation engages in dialogue how the writings of Norma Alarcon, Kimberle' Crenshaw, Judith Butler, and Roderick Ferguson align with the rearticulation of the theory of intersectionality criticizing the liberal notion of identity and subjectivity of women social and political issues. The ensuing academic goal also includes examining how these authors' seeming discrepant situations actually allow delineation of their shared point of conjecture, critical dialogues, and challenges of women in the 21st century.
The Unified Issue of the Authors
Review of Alarcon, Crenshaw, Butler, and Ferguson dialogue on American feminism expansion including global feminism reveals the one unified issue expressed by the three authors, remains not as much a criticism as delineation. The consensus women of color as feminists have more far-reaching underpinnings of their gender struggles than just patriarchal oppression of repressive social, legal, and moral issues in the struggle for equality.
Alarcon cuts to the point explaining, " some Anglo-American feminist subjects of
consciousness has tended to become a parody of the masculine subject of consciousness, thus revealing their ethnocentric liberal underpinnings." Defining this further, the underpinnings of the feminist of color draw on the very issue of her racial struggle super ceding the social issue of gender. At the same time the amalgamation of the authors in question position next draws on Crenshaw's similar explanation of the situation of Black women as pivotal to her insights. "it becomes more apparent how dominant conceptions of discrimination condition us to think about subordination as disadvantage occurring along a single categorical axis " She considers, this so extreme the resulting reality in her view leads to how "this single-axis framework erases Black women in the conceptualization, identification, remediation of race and sex discrimination ". The feminist movement in America therefore, becomes a limitation of any examination of the issue of inequality held in the "experiences" of Anglo-American women. The differentiation of social issues continuing separating a commonality of gender struggle in America recurs within the social, legal, and ideological system. This continuing separate treatment of the diversity of race, culture, and ethnicity in America's female gender aligned to social issues of inequality again, negates any ideology of uniting female racial differences.
Taken purely from an abstract perspective relating Butler's theorizing on gender sexuality and its pertinence to this ongoing discourse differentiating the Anglo from other races among the feminist struggles in America and even, globally, the clearest intersectionality of author's views exists. Butler's argument of the natural state of gender differences marginalizes females when society super cedes nature. Within non-Anglo feminist issues, it is the adopted colonial patriarchal repression directing their male counterparts. This particular fact therefore, does have a connection to the gender disparity as explained by Butler with nature versus society.
Continuing with these authors, finds Ferguson detailing the marginalization of African American feminists from the dominate Anglo-feminist with references to the epiphany African-American feminists found during their immersion into the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s continuing into the 1970s. He writes, "The history of black feminist formations underlines the contradictions of national liberation and identifies the ways in which relations of power were immanent within those struggles." His term of relations of power brought the reality of racial injustice more to the foreground for the African-American feminist than proclivities directed at gender equality.
Again, the amalgamation of Alarcon, Crenshaw, Butler, and Ferguson message clearly distinguishes the paradox of the American Feminist Movement exclusionary characteristics toward the non-Angle American female. Taking this to another area as significant as the directed discourse of this academic exercise looks at a completely different dynamic not considered in this assignment directive. This similar argument joining the authors' is about the marginalization of the Muslim Feminist nationally as well as globally from the so-called Western Feminist movement.
Other Fitting Considerations
So as not to wander (too far) astray from the focus of this academic exploration, the implications remain distinct considering (without going into detail) the underlying realities of Muslim feminine ideology completely points at the misrepresentation by largely cultural ideology as Muslims in conflict with the rights of Muslim women equality because of the wrong interpretation of the Qur'an. A final note here returns to the complexity of the issue of gender and women rights nationally and globally. The complexities lay in the diversity of the pool of women nationally and globally so from a '' gendered standpoint epistemology leads to feminism's bizarre relationship with other liberation movements, working inherently against the interests of non-white women and no one else." This goes back to Crenshaw's "single axis framework," as well as Ferguson's critique of the liberal notion of identity and subjectivity.
In this, the counter view focuses on the theory's framework of four tensions. First there exists no defining methodology of intersectionality, second, criticism of using African American women as the "quintessential intersectional subjects," third, the vagueness of the theory definition itself, and finally, the lack of empirical validity of intersectionality.
The argument citing these four characteristics ultimately challenges both the anti-racist and the feminist scholars' treatment of theoretical, methodological, and political "murkiness" of intersectionality. In doing so, the challenge looks to constructing a more complex manner of theorizing gender-based oppression and identity. The point of injecting this into this discourse remains how this further exemplifies the fundamental dynamics of the continuing historical aspects of the female gender's layers of different realities (even among the dominant Anglo-American feminist issues).
Conclusion
Within the context of the four authors profiled in this academic exploration, their arguments from a non-Anglo perspective take the struggles of humanity in general to the forefront of how Butler makes so much sense in the human move to socialization taking away the natural order of gender equality. Not to sound cavalier, without the trappings of society, the issue of equality of both genders aligned to nature provides perhaps, the most realistic without much deviation except perhaps who is the fittest for surviving. Gender identity at this basic level (again, without the incursion of societal marginalization defined by patriarchal precepts) remains a secondary, or possibly even lesser characteristic of the human experience in terms of equality.
In the meantime, as outlined by Alarcon, Crenshaw, and Ferguson there exists the divisiveness for a unified and meaning feminist tenet nationally and globally requiring ongoing analysis, debate, and ideally at some point in the not too far distant future a collective consciousness of humanity in general. This ideal consciousness embraces a more pragmatic view of gender. In this perspective, the fundamental benefits of expunging race, ethnicity, gender, and gender identity emerge in an enlightened and advanced awareness among humans. In the end, it is not African American, Hispanic, Native American, and all the other racial, ethnic, and cultural identities added to the feminine gender struggles, but rather, it is an issue of humanity in general suffering because of the marginalization of anyone by social "norms."
References
Alarcón, Norma. “The Theoretical Subject(s) of This Bridge Called My Back and Anglo-American Feminism,” in Gloria Anzaldúa, ed., Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Foundation Books, c1990), 359
Aziz Al-zmeh, "Chapter 1: Pluralism in Muslim Societies," in The Challenge of Pluralism: Paradigms from Muslim Contexts, ed. Abdou Filali-Ansary and Sikeena Karmali Ahmed (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 13
Butler, Judith. “Excerpt from Introduction to Bodies that Matter,” in Roger N. Lancaster & Michaela di Leonardo, eds., The Gender Sexuality Reader New York: Routledge 1997 9
Ferguson, Roderick A. “Something Else to Be: Sula, The Moynihan Report, and the Negations of Black Lesbian Feminism” in Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004 116
Nash, Jennifer. "Re-thinking Intersectionality" Feminist Review. 89, 2008 1-15
