”Intersectionality” , Media Studies and Feminism A short review on Crenshaw's , Hall's and Skeggs's works on Class, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality

As the matter of fact, there are several kinds of discriminations against minority groups in every society. In the eyes of social science scholars these groups are considered as ‘others’ due to their differences from the dominant group or the majority. Considering the main characteristics of these groups, one can claim that many master categories (Kleberg, 2007) conflate as the mater of intersectionality.

Crenshaw in her definition of intersectionality regarding shaping black and colored women claims that intersectionality refers to various ways in which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women's experiences,(although many of these experiences are not submitted within traditional boundaries of race and gender discrimination). In the other word intersectionality refers to "various ways in which race and gender intersect in shaping structural, political and representational aspects of violence against women of color." (Crenshaw, 1994:1244)

Then she goes through these three dimensions of violence in which different kinds of battering and oppression are happening. But she emphasizes that Women of color experience racism in ways not always the same as those experienced by men of color and sexism, in ways not always parallel to experiences of white women, antiracism and feminism are limited, even on their own terms.

*Structural intersectionality refers to violence in the shape of batter and rape with the notions of immigrated women of color (to US) and their social and cultural barriers.

*Political intersectionality makes women of color situated within at least two subordinated groups often with conflicting political agendas. ( the need to split one's political energies between two (sometimes opposing) groups è intersectional dispowerment)

• race and culture contribute to the suppression of domestic violence in many ways.
• battering is not exclusively a problem of the poor or minority communities it equally affects all races and classes.

Implementing into media studies

What is representational intersectionality?

Hall in the related chapter "the spectacle of the other" argues that representation is a complex business and especially when it comes to 'difference', it engages feelings, attitudes and emotions and it mobilizes fears and anxieties in the viewer. With many visual examples of racial representation, he concludes that the meaning is flowing among many possibilities. Most of the time his "preferred meaning" imply to an intersection between race, gender and sexuality.

Skeggs (2005) believes that the significance of all this media interest is that white working-class women in particular are being marked as the national constitutive limit to propriety. His definition of "other" is that Others do not have access to ‘choice’, all they can display is the lack of access to the techniques for telling themselves and lack of access to the right culture; they cannot perform the good self because they do not have the cultural resources to do so. We can apply Crenshaw's argument in his viewpoint as he has the same reception of otherness in the case of women in color as another minority group.

Finally: 'representational intersectionality' could be seen as the images which are produced through a conjunction of predominant narratives of race and gender and a recognition of how temporary critiques of racist and sexist representation marginalized women of color.

Reference:

-Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams (1991) “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity,Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” in Stanford Law Review,

-Hall, Stuart, ed, Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices, London 1997, chapter 4 “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’

-Skeggs, Beverly (2005) “The Making of Class and Gender through Visualizing Moral Subject Formation” in Sociology, SAGE Publications, vol 39(5): 965-982

- Kleberg,M (2007), Gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality in Feminist Media Studies. A history involving problems. class notes