Mapping Injustice Towards Feminist Activism

Abstract

Strategies for crafting feminist activism begin with a conversation, invites and involves the participation of many people, involves artists and creative communicators, and generates action. The essay is a discussion with examples of how to craft feminist activism from dialogue to committed action—to stop injustice and work toward intersectional justice. We begin the dialogue with intersectional theory and then facilitate a group process of visualization using metaphors of entanglement. The concept of intersectionality considers how hegemonic structures intersect to oppress the lives of racially marginalized communities. The goal of the dialogue is to examine the potential consequences of the interaction between multiple forms of subordination. While intersectionality theory helps to reveal the impact of multiple forms of oppression, making a simple analogy to an intersection warrants a reconsideration of how each form of oppression mutually informs the other. An entangled metaphor considers a more complicated rhizomatic relationship with complexly interwoven, twisted and tangled parts of minoritized identities and intersecting inequalities. Building from visualizations of entanglement, we discuss how to craft feminist activism to raise awareness of global responsibility toward social justice and democracy.