Intersectionality - A Resource for Societies in Transition?

Abstract

This essay opens with a brief foreword on the status and challenges posed by intersectionality as a ‘highly successful theory’ in the European context (Davis, 2008; Knapp, 2004). The essay that follows addresses the panel questions by using intersectionality as a critical resource within the influential field of transitional justice. The globalization of transitional justice as a framework for the resolution of conflicts is a remarkable phenomenon of the post-Cold War era (Bell and Craig, 2000). Transitional justice is understood by its advocates as a mechanism for enabling politically conflicted and/or post-colonial societies to institutionalise ‘universal’ principles of equality and human rights embedded in liberal democratic norms and processes of state building or regime reform (Teitel, 2003). Intersectionality theory enables critical analysis of the application of these principles in practice. In particular, it poses useful theoretical and empirical questions for explaining gendered experiences of transition in ‘deeply divided’ contexts. In this essay Northern Ireland’s 1998 Agreement is the political and textual site for intersectional analysis. The central argument is that a conceptualization of gender that intersects with other structural dimensions of inequality linked to state formation aids understanding transitional society. The complex tool of intersectional analysis is used to examine the theoretical tensions and practical implications inherent in universal claims for equality in a situation where recognition of ‘difference’ is enshrined in both the equality legislation and the mechanisms for future democratic governance. The essay affirms the critical relationship between structural, economic and political inequality and violent conflict and the limitations of law as a discursive framework for transition (Conaghan, 2007; Ní Aoláin, 2006; Rooney, 2007). It concludes by recommending that political stability in Northern Ireland and in other conflicted societies can be strengthened through tackling the corrosive impacts of deep-rooted inequalities. The research post-script acknowledges that the ‘promise’ of intersectionality poses intractable methodological problems within different interpretative and applied academic disciplines. A critical approach to understanding these problems involves reflection on what is at stake in the historical construction of disciplinary forms of knowledge and the methodological questions and boundaries that they foster. Perhaps intersectionality’s most important contribution to transitional justice discourse and methodology is to assert the importance of continuing to pose questions that are not easily answered.

Keywords: Intersectionality, Transitional Society