Intersectionality Is the New Sara Baartman: A Historical and Theoretical Analysis of Intersectionality Personified

• In Event: Black Feminist Perspectives in the History of Education

Abstract

Intersectionality has become a common “buzzword” within educational rhetoric. As a result of hyper usage, intersectionality has traveled far from its Black Feminist roots. Using an interdisciplinary approach to explore the misuse of intersectionality within academia and how it relates to the historical exploitation of Black women, the author argues that intersectionality has become the new Sara Baartman (also known as Hottentot Venus). In an effort to “use innovative theoretical frameworks,” the author fuses a theoretical and historical analysis to connect the parallels of intersectionality and how it has been theoretically exploited and forcefully “traveled” within academia, with the exploitative life, travels, and necropolitics of Sara Baartman and how her historical legacy represents the “personification” of intersectionality as a theory.

Author

• Lashawn Washington, University of Wisconsin - Madison