Can Intersectionality Save Us? Phallogocentric Feminisms and the Desire for Identity

Bibliographic Data

ID12146992
AuthorsSetareh Shohadaei (New York University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume40
Issue4
Pages849-865
Publication date2025-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHypatia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0887-5367 • E-ISSN: 1527-2001
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/hyp.2024.99
OpenAlexW4407004675
LanguageEN
References cited16

This paper engages with a series of recent literatures that examine how feminist and queer movements have become agents of nationalism, neoliberalism, and global wars. I argue that, while the critique of intersectionality has attempted to curtail the reproductions of such violence within feminism, it too has not been able to resist cooptations into nationalist and capitalist forms of power. Developing an epistemological critique of intersectionality, I arrive at an analysis of identity politics as an elemental identification with phallic power that erases the feminine. Building on the works of Elizabeth Grosz, Wendy Brown, and Luce Irigaray, I suggest that at the core of such feminist alliances with domination lies an unresolved relation to feminine desire as the desire for a non-identitarian politics

Aesthetics · Gender identity · Identity (music · Intersectionality · Political science · Sociology · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Philosophy · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics

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