Intersectionality, (Dis)unity, and Processes of Becoming at the 2017 Women's March Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2019, 2019 The Organization for Research on Women and Communication. This article engages with theories of intersectionality, affect, and emotion, which often have been separated in scholarship on social movements, to understand the participation of diverse voices in the Womens March on Washington and sister marches in Austin and Dallas, Texas. Based on interviews and participant observation, we argue that peoples multiple entry points to these marchesoften articulated in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and generationwere linked to their feelings, passions, and (for some, quite vexed) understandings of solidarity. We also argue that such affective intensities linked disparate bodies that constituted the march as a movement. We thus provide a deeper understanding of how identity, structures of power, affect, and emotion assembled bodies at the Womens March and produced it as a potentially transformative event. The article also sheds light on the often problematic processes involved in individual and societal change.

published proceedings

  • WOMENS STUDIES IN COMMUNICATION

altmetric score

  • 1

author list (cited authors)

  • Gantt-Shafer, J., Wallis, C., & Miles, C.

citation count

  • 5

complete list of authors

  • Gantt-Shafer, Jessica||Wallis, Cara||Miles, Caitlin

publication date

  • April 2019