Intersectionality: A Useful Category for the Historical Analysis of Oppressed Communities?
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-05-26

Full title: Intersectionality: A Useful Category for the Historical Analysis of Oppressed Communities? The Case of Chamorro Women in Spanish Colonial Guam (18th Century)

Since its inception in 1989, intersectionality has received great acceptance among gender studies scholars, even within archaeology. Although the term can be useful when analysing how different oppressions intersect on individuals, I will claim that the emphasis placed by intersectional approaches on individuals and on their personal experiences show that it may not constitute the most appropriate category for analysing the oppressions suffered by whole communities. In this communication I will adopt a (trans)feminist and decolonial stance to examine how different oppressions (especially those of gender, ethnicity, sexuality and age) were articulated on the native women of Guam, in the Marianas Islands, during the early Spanish colonization of the archipelago. In so doing, I will propose the category of ‘matrix of domination’, coined by Patricia Hill Collins, as an alternative to intersectionality in order to study the interrelation of different oppressions in communities.

Enrique Moral de Eusebio (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)

TAG Deva 2018
Session: Feminist Archaeologies: Intersectionality, Interpretation, Inclusivity