Raewyn Connell’s Critique of “Intersectionality”: A Reconsideration

Since the publication of Raewyn Connell’s Masculinities in 1995, feminist scholars have extensively elaborated her notion of multiple masculinities with insights from intersectional feminism. While acknowledging the many points of resonance between these two important frameworks, this essay turns attention to Connell’s own reservation about the notion of “intersectionality.” Connell’s cautionary stance, I argue, can provide us useful guardrails for examining the interplay of multiple systems of oppression and thus enrich the ongoing development of intersectional research programs that many of us are already invested in. Taking up Collins’s call for incorporating ideas from other knowledge projects into intersectional feminism, I suggest that three bodies of literature can help us address Connell’s concerns and advance a more processual and context-driven approach: feminist ethnographies of/from the Global South, contingent-contextual theories of racial capitalism, and ethnomethodological analyses of categorization.