While it may seem relatively simple to write an “intellectual history” of a particular theoretical concept, in the case of intersectionality theory nothing could be further from the truth. Ange-Marie Hancock enters into this highly politicized domain with an open mind and a broad intellectual reach. Instead of simply attributing the “founding” of intersectionality to Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins, as commonly occurs, Hancock finds intersectional threads in writings from Maria Stewart in Boston in 1831 and shows that the “intersectional turn” occurred simultaneously across African American, Asian American, Native American, and Latina feminist writers in the United States, as well as writers and activists from around the world, particularly in the Global South, during the 1980s.

Hancock is careful in her framing of the book to make clear that this is “an” intellectual history (rather than the) and that she sees herself as an intellectual steward of this area of research instead of as an “owner” of it. Part of what helps her maintain conceptual clarity is her focus on the two main intellectual projects that, she believes, arise from intersectional analysis—the project of visibility/inclusion and the project of rethinking the analytical relationship between categories. The result is a rigorous and rich analysis of intersectionality research rooted in the writings of scholars from literary studies, ethnic studies, critical race theory, legal studies, sociology, feminist theory, psychology, and political science.

Intersectionality provides a rich, comprehensive, and conceptually coherent elucidation of a deeply contested and complex field of research. It begins with an exploration of the activist roots of the intersectional paradigm, tracing them to “the multiple and overlapping movements to end violence against women, particularly over the last forty years” (p. 40). The author lays out the “common intersectionality-like threads across these different sectors,” including advocates, government agencies, and international service providers, in order to articulate the role they played in advancing intersectionality as a paradigm. She highlights the ways that complex understandings of visibility and invisibility, along with an appreciation of the complexity inherent in categorical relationships, allowed intersectional theorists to engage “difference without reproducing homogeneity” (p. 71).

Hancock then explores intersectionality’s theoretical grounding in standpoint theory, examining the epistemological distinctions among intersectionality, multicultural feminist thought, and standpoint theory. She argues that even though all of these approaches emerged from similar origins, they diverged into “conceptually distinct intellectual projects, largely based on distinctions regarding the analytical relationships between categories of difference” (p. 80). Specifically, she points to the ability of these approaches to help scholars rethink the binary between the oppressor and the oppressed and to reconceptualize power. In laying out the specifics of an intersectional epistemology, she makes clear the degree to which intersectionality “demands a rearticulation of the relationships between what are traditionally perceived as conceptually distinct analytical categories of difference,” such as race and gender (p. 122). After a discussion of the role of narrative in intersectional thought, particularly regarding bridge building across categories, Hancock considers the process of naming and the political and representational power inherent in that process. She lays out the intellectual bonds between “intersectionality-like thought” and the development of social constructivism, arguing that “intersectionality-like thinking about how power is relationally constituted predates and anticipates Michel Foucault’s well-known arguments about power” (p. 164).

In the conclusion, Hancock returns to some of the critiques of intersectionality research, in particular the argument that intersectional research focuses solely on the marginalized aspects of identity, ignores issues such as sexuality and religion, and/or is too focused on the experiences of women of color to “travel” and be able to shed light on other phenomena (p. 195). While acknowledging the many responses that intersectional scholars have made to these claims, she lays out two additional values of intersectional research—its ability to reshape “the relationships among and between categories of difference,” and the fact that “intersectionality’s engagement with the concept of ‘experience’ is distinct from many mainstream engagements with experience in ways that distance it from the standard inclusionary arguments and assumptions of homogeneity associated with identity politics” (p. 196). These insights seem especially valuable in the current political moment.

Considering future directions for intersectionality studies, Hancock builds on Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall in arguing that intersectional scholarship should have centrifugal or centripetal foci. Centrifugal work “asks theoretical and methodological questions as intersectionality travels across disciplines in a more integrative mode” (p. 200). Centripetal work takes “intersectionality as its foundation and strikes out on the margins of various disciplines toward methodologies that would do justice to the interventions the normative tenets of intersectionality aspire to implement in order to transform the world we live in” (p. 201). While these foci do not necessarily encompass the entirety of potential types of appropriate and ethical intersectional work, Hancock’s framing gives scholars useful ways to consider their place within this larger body of literature, while reminding them to be certain to consider the intellectual history of intersectionality research when conducting their analyses.

The book’s two greatest contributions are its attempt to break intersectionality as a concept into its key epistemological and conceptual parts and the delineation of intersectionality-like thinking across historical time, national boundaries, various racial groups, and disciplines. Hancock makes clear that her goal is not to ignore or dislodge the key role that black women have played in creating intersectionality-like claims throughout history. She resists the idea that expanding the diversity of contributors to this area of social thought by definition decenters black women. Rather, she concludes that the richness of this tradition across groups and international borders must be appreciated. This means that scholars must “respect the coherence of the theory” and “read across disciplines, across continents, and across communities of engagement so that we might engage in careful and responsible management of a burgeoning field of study” (p. 201).

Given the complexity of this area of inquiry, no single book can capture all possible aspects of intersectional thought, the breadth of which Hancock alludes to and the popularity of which is reflected in the impressive citation counts she reports for Kimberlé Crenshaw’s and Patricia Hill Collins’s seminal works (p. 13). Clearly, as Hancock acknowledges, there are important areas of the field that are beyond the scope of this book. What is unique about her effort is its deep historical roots and its interdisciplinarity. That breadth, including her exploration of intersectionality’s activist roots, comprises an important resource for present-day scholars engaged in intersectional work and a more accurate and comprehensive intellectual history of this approach than has been available until now.

As someone who teaches a graduate seminar on using intersectionality in empirical research, I know how difficult it is to explain a concept that upsets key, often unquestioned, ontological assumptions that many researchers have concerning what categories such as race and gender are and why they are meaningful within our social world. Hancock deftly walks her readers through this complex terrain, providing new sources to read, new ways of reading old ones, and a conceptual framing that allows the reader to make sense of a very complex, and ontologically destabilizing, intellectual orientation. Intersectionality should be required reading for graduate courses in race, feminist theory, and women in politics. Its clarity ensures that it would be appropriate for use with advanced undergraduates as well.