春雨直播app

Intersectionality: Interlocking Power Relations in the Contemporary World (2024), edited by Kazuyo Tsuchiya and Riho Isaka, examines how interrelated categories such as race, class, caste, gender, sexuality, and nationality intersect and produce inequalities. This book uses the analytical framework of intersectionality to explore various aspects of history, society, and culture across different regions through specific case studies from an interdisciplinary perspective.
 
By paying close attention to inequalities within socially constructed categories such as race, class, caste, and gender, as well as the relationships between these mutually constituted categories, the book delves into how social and historical phenomena, as well as cultural and literary works, can be analyzed. When applied to specific regions other than the U.S., what does the framework of intersectionality reveal? What implications does intersectionality have when institutionalized in scholarly fields? Considering these questions, this book explores what the concept of intersectionality highlights and the potential challenges it presents.
 
Part 1, “The ‘Past’ and ‘Present’ of Intersectionality,” addresses these questions from the perspectives of history and literature. Chapter 1 analyzes a short story published in early 19th-century Prussia, The Betrothal in St. Domingo, illustrating how the concept of intersectionality can be effectively applied in literary analysis and what contributions literary studies can make to this concept. Chapter 2 explores how interpretations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, can be reshaped when analyzed through the concept of intersectionality, shedding new light not only on the main characters but also the traditionally marginalized female characters. Chapter 3 examines the concept of reproductive justice—a movement and framework that combines social justice with the struggle for sexual and reproductive health and rights—by focusing on the activism of Loretta J. Ross, a leading figure in the movement. Chapter 4 addresses the movement surrounding Filipinos compelled into sexual slavery by the Japanese military, exploring the application of intersectionality beyond the context of American society and its potential to elucidate historical manifestations of violence. Chapter 5 introduces how the concept of intersectionality has been discussed among scholars in India and then uses this concept to analyze the content and context of the Hindi film, Article 15 (2019).
 
Part 2, “Understanding the Contemporary World through Intersectionality,” investigates the potential significance of this concept in understanding the political and social conditions of the modern world. Chapter 6 explores four key questions essential for understanding the possibilities and limitations of intersectionality. By introducing the statistical concept of interaction effects, it reveals the core idea of intersectionality, namely, “negative synergy.” Chapter 7 examines how the LGBTQ and animal rights movements in Israel distanced themselves from a sense of solidarity with the Palestinian cause because of a narrowed focus on single-issue advocacy and increased mainstream acceptance. Chapter 8 uses the case of an HIV mass infection as an example and discusses the institutional and structural oppression in contemporary Chinese society, in which categories such as urban/rural spaces, ethnicity, income disparity, gender, and sexuality are intertwined. Chapter 9 points out that in France, while the term intersectionality has become widely known, a strong negative reaction to the term has emerged in recent years, with many rejecting it as fundamentally incompatible with the universalism of the French Republic. Chapter 10 highlights the challenges posed by intersectionality: how to coexist with others without attempting to exclude or comfortably assimilate those who threaten the identity of “us,” even as we continue to grapple with the anxiety of irreconcilable otherness.
 
By taking on the question of “what intersectionality does rather than what intersectionality is” (Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall 2013) through case studies of a variety of regions, periods, and fields, we hope that the discussions and analyses presented in this book can be of some help for those tackling “complexities” in the world as well as those challenging various forms of social inequalities.
 

(Written by TSUCHIYA Kazuyo, Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2024)