Intersectionality in interregnum: A conjunctural keyword analysis

Does intersectionality speak theoretically and politically to our current moment, to its multiple and interrelated crises? Does its explanatory force match its claims? Is it of any use in the service of building connected struggles to dismantle the matrix of exploitative and oppressive power structures and relations that it purports to examine in their entangled complexities? And, crucially, does it help us envision and build alternatives to a present that is clearly not working? This paper aims to contribute to an open-ended, collaborative project critically engaging intersectionality – discerning what to discard, retain, or rework so that it may serve as a decisively counter-hegemonic tool today. This requires confronting intersectionality's theoretical gaps, as well as its political dissonance. The article's necessarily limited input consists of proposing a method and applying it to salient definitional and political challenges to intersectionality's conceptual coherence and counter-hegemonic potential.