CentreLGS Conference: Theorising Intersectionality
Saturday 21 - Sunday 22 May 2005 @ Keele University
Abstracts:
To view participants abstracts, please click on the alphabetical
links below (abstracts are listed by surname), or download
the full list of abstracts in Microsoft Word format.
A - B
| C - D
| E - G
| H - J
| K | L
- P | Q
- R | S
| T - V
| W - Z
Margrit Shildrick
University College Dublin, Ireland
Paper Title: Transgressing the Law with Foucault
and Derrida
Abstract: The paper explores the critical
intersection between two highly individual notions of
the law as they relate to the substantive ground of certain
transgressive bodies. In Abnormal Foucault (2003) claims
that the otherness of morphological abnormality arises
not in and of itself, but from the offence it offers to
law. This juridical framing enables Foucault to name conjoined
twins, and hermaphrodites, as the privileged signifiers
of the early modern meaning of the monstrous, precisely
because they are uncontainable within civil, canon, or
religious law. And in Derrida’s terms, the ‘monstrous
arrivant’ – as that which is always yet to
come – is suggestive of a radical transgressivity
that is finally beyond the disciplinary reach of normative
paradigms. What would it mean, then, to transpose corporeal
anomaly from the sphere of normativity and govermentality
to occupy the place of an impossible justice? Can highly
abstract theory yield new ways of thinking otherwise about
the materiality of those forms that frustrate social,
cultural and legal normativities?
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Tracy Simmons
University of Leicester, UK
Paper Title: Queering citizenship: the spatial
regulation of rights and recognitions
Abstract: This paper explores the relationship
between migration, sexuality and citizenship. More specifically,
it examines the ways in which citizenship discourses produce
and regulate categories of sexual identity. This is especially
evident in immigration policies relating to family reunion
in the UK and the broader context of the EU, which are
centred on marriage. Though there have been some moves
to recognise unmarried relationships, as can be seen in
the UK, they are framed by heterosexist discourses that
forge a ‘marriage’ model for sexual citizens
to conform to. This brings to the fore the way in which
citizenship remains ultimately a conservative exchange,
where the recognition of rights is implicated by the production
of both gendered and (hetero)sexualised forms of identity.
Therefore, through this example, I intend to draw together
queer and feminist positions in order to illustrate how
they provide a useful interrogation of citizenship frameworks.
*******************
Paul Skidmore
Humboldt Universitat, Germany
Paper Title: Constructing a model of intersectionality
in German legal discourse
Abstract: Some of the earliest writings
in the USA explicitly to focus on intersectionality addressed
the intersection of sex and "race" and this
is still taken by many today to be the paradigm intersection.Within
German legal culture little if any theoretical attention
has been paid however to this issue in part because of
a general cultural avoidance of discussion of "race"
or ethnicity". Nevertheless the obligation imposed
by Community law to implement Directive 2000/43 on race
discrimination and Directive 2000/78 (the Framework Directive)
introducing non-discrimination norms in employment in
respect of sexual orientation, age, disability and religious/political
belief requires the legal system to confront questions
of discrimination law afresh. My paper takes employment
law in Germany examining legislation and case law to observe
where and how intersectional questions have in fact already
been addressed (or, alternatively, apparently ignored).
The aim is to sketch out the possible shape of the German
lens through which intersectionality is viewed in legal
discourse, for example, with its focus on sex and disability
and on sex and religion, questioning whether the hitherto
apparent absence of a sensibility for the intersection
of sex and race has produced an alternative model of intersectionality.
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Hilary Sommerlad
Leeds Metropolitan University, UK
Paper Title: Researching the Processes of Legal
Professional Identity Construction: a Study of Intersectionality
Abstract: This paper will address the
question of intersectionality and the law through discussion
of research into the encounter between legal trainees
and the profession. The last 20 years has seen the growing
participation of ‘outsiders’ in the legal
profession, raising the possibility both of its democratization
and of a re-thinking of the law. This period has also
been one of great change for the profession, yet to date
this appears to owe more to the processes of globalization
and neo-liberalism than to the inclusion of ‘outsider’
legal professionals. Hegemonic legal professionalism has
appeared able to continue to set the terms of inclusion,
apparently stifling any challenge so that outsiders suppress
their original identity (ies) in order to be achieve inclusion,
and / or are directed to particular, generally marginalised
niches. Drawing on the results of a research project into
the processes of legal professional identity construction,
this paper will examine the interaction between these
processes and those by which mainstream professionalism
reproduces itself.
*******************
Sharon Snyder
University of Illinois, USA
Paper Title: Across the Intersections of Identity:
Theorizing Disability Harassment
Abstract: Although sexual harassment
has been carefully articulated and relatively well-defined,
there is no corresponding discourse about disability-based
harassment in the academy of anywhere else. In this presentation
I define some beginning contours for identifying occurrences
of disability harassment around three key criteria:
1. bodily-based commentary that references physical,
cognitive, or sensory capacities as the basis for inferiority;
2. the creation of an atmosphere, whether in employment
or other spheres of public interaction, where disabled
people (and even their close allies) undergo experiences
of intimidation and diminishment of their contributions;
3. the participation in contexts that exclude disabled
people on the basis of inaccessible interactions or inflexible
communication forums.
In this argument I will theorize that the presence of
all three of these criteria need to be recognised as violent
social contexts that explicitly single out disabled people
for their perceived inbuilt inferiorities.
I will not draw the distinction between "real"
or imagined impairments given that this division has been
part of a history of exclusion in and of itself. For instance,
to argue that one has been slandered by an inaccurate
diagnosis does little more than mire those with differences
in a further classification of empirical deviancy. Instead,
the talk will offer examples of cases where the intrusion
of a diagnostic gaze, with its over-determined emphasis
on behaviour analysis, impedes human rights initiatives
on behalf of the social and cultural participation of
disabled persons.
