Undermining the “Matrix of Domination”: Religion, Race and Gender and the Intersectionality Politics of Aliaa Sharrief’s “Hijabi” Hip-hop and Modest Fashion

Abstract

Kimberle Crenshaw, a Black legal scholar, upon introducing the term “intersectionality” (1989) sought to undermine the lack of productivity of “monistic definitions of discrimination” which are based upon “mutually exclusive categories” (Carastathis 3). She used the term intersectionality as an analytical tool to prove how Black women were in a disadvantaged position in the court system in the US as a result of the lack of attention to the intersecting oppressive factors of race, gender and class. In her essay “Mapping the Margins,” Crenshaw designates three major aspects of intersectionality: structural, representational, and political (1245). Moreover, she clarifies that, as a paradigm, intersectionality uncovers how power works pervasively to discriminate against women. In 1986, Patricia Collins also plays a role in developing the discourse of intersectionality (though not directly using the term yet) by foregrounding the need to explore how systems of oppression are interlinked (Learning from the outsider 21). Moreover, Collins goes on in (2000) to refer to this interlinked system of oppression as a “matrix of domination” showing how intersecting oppressions are organized “(both particular and structural, disciplinary, hegemonic)” (“Intersectionality”