Back to the Future: Genealogies of Intersectional Politics in 1970s–1980s Feminist and LGBTIQ+ Movements

Abstract

This panel explores intersectional practices and forms of theorizing that emerged within feminist and LGBTIQ+ movements well before the term intersectionality was coined and circulated in the 1990s. By recentering the voices of racialized, working-class, and/or queer participants in the social movements and grassroots practices of the 1970s and 1980s, it contends that today’s emphasis on coalitional and intersectional politics must be understood historically. Such a reframing is crucial for telling feminist and LGBTIQ+ histories differently, specifically by decentering dominant subject positions and foregrounding the multiplicity of actors who shaped these struggles. Conversely, it argues that contemporary right-wing and illiberal discourses targeting social justice movements and critical thinking must likewise be approached genealogically and situated within a longer continuum of earlier controversies, including those that emerged within progressive movements themselves, directed against minority subjects. Bringing together critical theoretical perspectives with historical analyses of social movements and marginalized communities, the panel highlights the ways in which intersecting forms of domination were articulated, contested, and reimagined across diverse activist contexts in Italy, Germany, Switzerland and France before the 1990s.

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