Shifting analytics and linking theories: A conversation about the “meaning-making” of intersectionality and transnational feminism

SynopsisTransnational feminism and intersectionality have been widely celebrated in women's studies and feminist scholarship as a theory, framework, and politics. As antiracist feminist scholars who research and teach in these areas, this conversational essay grapples with the shifting meanings of these analytics within our research and how we have experienced their institutionalization in women's studies and related fields. This essay explores the “desires” – to borrow Robyn Wiegman's language – that underpin feminist engagement with transnationalism and intersectionality and considers the potential spaces of intellectual co-existence between intersectionality and transnational feminism, especially given how they have traveled and circulated across the humanities and social sciences.