Resituating the Crossroads: Theoretical Innovations in Black Feminist Ethnography

Abstract

Inspired by the seminal Black Feminist Anthropology volume edited by Irma McClaurin, I examine how Black feminist ethnographies have theorized intersectionality or what the Combahee River Collective called the “simultaneity” and “interlocking” of oppressions. One overlooked theoretical contribution by Black feminist ethnography in terms of analyzing race, class, and gender is the conception of the simultaneity of conjuncture and disjuncture. Given the location of the ethnographers’ positionalities and “fields” within the African Diaspora, I suggest that the coexistence of conjuncture and disjuncture emerges from a diasporic heuristic of “crossroads,” signifying more complexity than the metaphor of intersection.