1/5 [Discussion Article] Marxism & Intersectionality imhojournal.org/articles/marxism-intersectionality/ Eleonora Roldán Mendívil June 29, 2023 Length:1341 words Summary: This review of Ashley J. Bohrer‘s, “Marxism and Intersectionality. Race, Gender Class and Sexuality Under Contemporary Capitalism” examines whether or not the book succeeds in providing an unifying analysis of intersectionality and revolutionary Marxism – Editors Intersectionality has become one of the most important leftist terms of reference in recent years. Politics should be thought intersectional, that is, inclusive activists and/or scholars cry out. Social difference is not perceived as an obstacle but as a possibility for a diverse left political practice. Divided into three sections, Ashley J. Bohrer attempts to bring Marxist analyses into critical conversation with analyses stemming from an intersectionality theory approach. To do so, she traces the histories of the respective political traditions, as well as the dominant debates surrounding Marxist approaches to gender, “race” or sexuality, and intersectional approaches to social analysis. Her focus is largely on the United States, even if this is not explicitly made clear as a specifically historical-geographical lens throughout the book. This makes the historical tracing seem like a global-historical one—something it does not deliver. Bohrer traces both traditions as mutually overlapping; an account that is at least confusing, since intersectionality as an analytical lens is usually located in U.S. debates of the late 1970s, and the historical beginning of Marxism as a critique, method, and political perspective can be located in the first half of the 19th century. For Bohrer, however, there are voices of Black radicals as early as the 1920s, for example, who located the interconnectedness of the “race” question with that of the woman question in economic terms as well. Here the first problems arise: whoever says “race’” gender and class—in no particular order—does not necessarily mean intersectionality. Yet Bohrer makes a particularly eclectic use of various discussions on these topics years before the emergence of intersectionality theory. For example, by naming Black female figures of the worker’s movement like Claudia Jones, an outspoken and influential member of the Communist Party U.S. first and after her deportation to the UK in 1955 of the Communist Party of Great Britain, whose writings and political engagement around working-class Black women’s issues in particular stand out, Bohrer positions Jones within an intersectional tradition [ii]. As a political and soon after also academic current, intersectionality and intersectionality theory actually emerge much later.