AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

17 Intersectionality and Human Rights: Law, Theory and Praxis 207
about inclusivity, power and privilege, as well as access to constructive
spaces and “voice” within these spaces, it is important to consider where
– geographically and conceptually – the theoretical debates on intersectionality
occur. It is crucial to reflect on how it is currently framed and its
applicability to other contexts. For example, Crenshaw has prominently
explored violence against women in the US through the lens of intersectionality,
arguing that the lack of attention to how race and gender intersect
has rendered US policy and practice ineffective with regard to violence
against women of colour (1991, 1993). Other feminists have
followed suit with an increasing volume of feminist literature on the
need to incorporate intersectionality by looking at how race, language,
social class and other issues of identity politics come to bear on the way
that women experience violence.
How applicable is this growing body of literature, however, to other
contexts? I have written elsewhere about how gender-based violence and
sexual violence against women in South Africa are often addressed by
the government and some civic organisations as if these have nothing to
do with gender (De Nobrega 2008). Instead, the focus has tended to be
on how violence against women is “really” about class (poverty) and racial
discrimination (apartheid), or an effect of the devolution of the family
unit which is resulting in moral decay and social disorder. There is
little or no recognition of how gender inequality, and hegemonic discourses
on gender identity and sexuality, are at the root of this violence.
The case of South Africa is therefore the complete opposite of examples
in the mainstream writing on intersectionality that is emerging on
Europe and the US.
Does this mean that intersectionality is merely a useful concept for
the North? No. On the contrary, the strength of intersectionality is that
it allows rights-based feminist writers to recognise their own location and
their positions of power and privilege with regard to other women (and
even men), without needing to abandon the entire feminist project altogether
for fears that their views are somehow compromised because they
are not on the “bottom-rung” in terms of oppression. It is not the case
that someone who has “applied” an intersectional framework or analysis
to a particular issue (such as gender oppression) is suddenly “freed” from
her own framing and identity, but if she uses her “own social location…
as an analytic resource” she may be more able to understand her location
of oppression in relation to others (Davis 2008: 9). Intersectionality en-