The recent protests at South African universities (also called the #campaigns) catapulted two concepts, that of colonialism and intersectionality, into academic debate. Women students, drawing on the slogan “my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit” call themselves “radical, intersectional, African feminists”. During the protests this was a type of “in your face” feminism, an embrace of a radical feminist stance that was rare with an older generation of black feminists in South Africa. This moment provided a distinct ontological break with past enunciations of feminism among African women. This paper attempts an analysis of the students’ understanding of intersectionality as interlocking identities in a matrix of domination as well as that of experience.

This lecture is part of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology Colloquium series.