Note: Inspired by @Crazycookie@slrpnk.net 's last 2 posts (btw my plan for the weekend is to read the compilation!), I thought of taking a look at the anarchist library for something “similar” to add to my reading list for the weekend.
I found interesting the 3-word title and since it was super short I thought of checking it out. Obviously I liked it, and this is why I shared it, but I also wanted to add that I don’t agree with the metaphore that intersectionality is a microscope, as it says, even tho I tend to agree with the explanation it gives just bellow.
The microscope thingy takes me to something that is not visible to a naked eye because it’s tiny. For me intersectionality is the opposite of that. It’s an analytical tool that makes us see connections that are totally obvious and right in front of us, but we are systemically conditioned not to pay attention to them. This is why we don’t see them, not because they are too small to see. In a way, it’s a practical tool that helps us expand our understanding as well as empathy, beyond western/colonial/etc cultural norms. Something like that.
I am sure that anarchism as it is today still has tons to learn and understand, and changes to make, but if you hang out with anarchists who think decolonization, feminism or anti-racism are optional stances, heh, you may not be with what most would call anarchists. That’s widely considered part of the package nowadays.
I prefer the way you present it. However, I think I see what they mean by that. A microscope allows to observe the cells in order to understand the organism. Intersectionalism will look at individual situations, which are by essence unique, to understand broader issues and how they interact.
In my experience, there is also a “negative photography” aspect, which would probably be a metaphor for another aspect of intersectionality: by accumulating different experiences of different oppression, you start noticing patterns, not in the oppressed, but in the oppressors. If you were too see only the footsteps of people in a forest, it would teach you where the trees are implicitly, and also where the passages and the bridges are.