Why are conflicts about race a point of no return for feminist organizations?

Abstract

This article seeks to advance scholarship on conflict in feminist organizations. Using the theoretical framework on agonistic conflict of Chantal Mouffe, it analyzes a conflict about racism that arose in a feminist lesbian, bi and trans social movement organization, located in Paris (France). The main contribution lies in offering a framework to analyze the mechanisms that prevented this conflict from constructively fostering the intersectional politics of the feminist organization. The ethnographic findings show that the organization's inability to challenge its racism and whiteness is linked to its post-political vision of feminism, which translates into attempts to suppress conflict related to multiple and competing identifications. Thus, this article contributes to existing research on conflict in feminist organizing by suggesting that the subduing of conflict associated with such a post-political vision of feminism prevents feminist organizing from being “anti-oppressive”.