CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

For Solidarity: Marxism and Intersectionality

Davis 217

In a world where everything is at the tip of our fingers and solidarity is increasingly happening around the global network, different violences interlock and express themselves through these networks of solidarity. In my search for unoppressive solidarity from the point of view of a political subject, I examine Marxism and Intersectional theory. I argue that shortcomings exist in both theories. Working from those shortcomings, I attempt to merge the strengths of Marxism with those of intersectionality and explore their importance from the point of view of a political subject. Marcuse talks about the end of possibilities and the role of social deviants in creating a rupture, but he misses out on various strains of identity politics: race, gender, sexuality. He fails to see that the social deviants are not created by one paradigm of oppression, rather by interlocking forms of oppression. His rupture in neoliberal capitalism cannot happen unless these oppressions are taken into account in understanding the navigation of the social deviants, in different contexts of power. Using the accounts by Srila Roy and Wendy Brown I argue the need for merging intersectionality with traditional Marxism, and I offer a constructive critique of Marcuse. Using Ange-Marie Hancock I explore the benefits of intersectionality as a research method. Her approach lacks an economic critique offered by the Marxists, however. Finally Kevin Duong brings up the political shortcomings of intersectionality as a purely descriptive project. Using his model I argue the ways in which the merger of intersectionality and Marxism would allow the subject to become politicized for minimally oppressive solidarity.

https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/clas/2015/program/413