Editors’ Introduction: Cultural Studies and Intersectionality as Intellectual Practice

Abstract

As a “critical social theory,” intersectionality already lies at the roots of contemporary cultural studies, and the best work in cultural studies has the capacity for or is already engaging with intersectionality as method. This is work that accounts for the multifaceted nature of subjects, institutions, processes, and structures as it asks its questions about cultural objects, experience, ideology, history, or discourses. Intersectionality as, along with dialectical materialism, a core intellectual practice of cultural studies, offers expanded possibilities for political traction, relevance to the world and people’s lives, and transformative potential. We see models of such work throughout this issue, including with part two of a special forum on emergent analytics of critical humanities.

Keywords

• cultural studies
• dialectical materialism
• intersectionality
• marxism
• scholarship