Let’s Talk About the Metaphysics of Intersectionality—But Let’s Take It Slow
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25365/jso-2025-9743Keywords:
intersectionality, fundamentality, methodology, critical social ontology, Social Metaphysics, powerAbstract
Recent analytic feminist proposals explore the metaphysics of intersectionality through frameworks such as grounding or emergence (Bernstein 2020; Jorba and López de Sa 2024). However, these approaches, rooted in hierarchical ontology, risk yielding counterintuitive interpretations of marginalized experiences or exacerbating their marginalization. This paper has two objectives: (i) to advocate for a more reflective methodology to theorizing the metaphysics of intersectionality and, more broadly, mind-dependent structures within social ontology; and (ii) to propose an alternative framework that centers power relations while rejecting hierarchical fundamentality. Unlike existing proposals, this alternative does not treat any group's experiences or identities as more fundamental than others, and so aligns with the core principles of intersectionality.
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