Third Wave Feminism’s Unhappy Marriage of Poststructuralism and Intersectionality Theory

This article first traces the history of unhappy marriages of disparate theoretical perspectives in US feminism. In recent decades, US third-wave authors have arranged their own unhappy marriage in that their major publications reflect an attempt to wed poststructuralism with intersectionality theory. Although the standpoint epistemology of intersectionality theory shares some common ground with the epistemology of poststructuralism, their epistemological assumptions conflict on a number of important dimensions. This contested terrain has generated serious debates within the third wave and between secondand thirdwave feminists. The form, content, and political implications of their “unhappy marriage” are the subject of this article.