Introduction:BiologizingCulture/CulturingBiology 25
this, the gender/sex nexus has so far taken on strategic importance as
have identity markers such as ethnicity, race, geopolitical positioning,
etc.^16 But this is definitely not the whole story. We have grown
accustomed to view identities modulated around gender or race as
producingsubjects-in-difference.Whatlookingatthebiologyofhuman
life can add to that is showing us that humans can and do inhabit
multiple other differences, formed around health, age, ablebodiedness,
andmanyothers.
With this broader outreach, intersectionality as both a research
paradigm promoting multiple factor analysis and a socio-cultural
advocacypracticecanevenbemoreusefulforcooperationbetweenand
across different social actors and movements. This is so because in the
areas just mentioned, the biology of human beings has historically
grounded intersectional differentiation and provided an empirical and
epistemologicalbasisforoverlappingandmutuallyreinforcingformsof
socialandculturalOthering.
What needs to be emphasized in an intersectional context is that,
being one of the most imperative "vectors of oppression and privilege"
(Ritzer and Stepinski 204), biology-based arguments have been more
effective than many others in positioning people on the losing side of
societies, capitalist or not. Especially the differential biological
endowmentofhumanbeingsisalmostroutinelyinvokedasthe"natural"
basis for such Othering. The relations of inequality, neglect, even
contempt, created on this basis are of course manifold, ranging from
questions of bodily perfectibility to forms of deviant conduct. Race,
gender, age, and disability are showcase examples here; but then there
are also others, like women of color who are at one and the same time
objects of discrimination in the labor market and of everyday sexism.
Another exemplary case has been presented by Joyce and Mamo who
(^16) This admittedly broad sketch of a vast and at times perplexingly complex
field has been resourced by the 2013 edition ofSigns(Cho, Sumi, Kimberlé
Williams Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall, eds. Intersectionality: Theorizing
Power, Empowering Theory.Spec. Issue ofSigns38.4 (2013). Print.), and by
Michael Kimmel (The GenderedSociety. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.).
Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge's recentIntersectionality: Key Concepts
(Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2016. Print.) does not explicitly address the
biosector.