Intersectionality. Marginalized by Intersectionality: Teachers and Scholars of Color Participating in Assemblages of Violence

• In Event: AERA Teachers of Color Handbook Session 2

Abstract

Using autoethnographic data, this chapter explores how a multiracial, queer teacher faced marginalization through identity politics. Too often these political games are played by dominant groups seeking to use emotional violence to reify power structures and by marginalized people seeking to claim space at the expense of others. Such aggressions contribute to an assemblage of violence, or the multiple iterations of violence that allow acts of aggression to become normalized. Through in-group violence, the author argues that although intersectional dialogues are helpful in naming and claiming space for those who identify with the intersections, the power structure of identity politics within intersectionality can also serve to reify the very normalized aggressions that such complicated conversations are designed to interrupt.

Author

• Boni Wozolek, Penn State University, Abington College