Intersectionality and psychology: Epistemological notes on an open-ended relationship
Vasianna Konstantopoulou
Abstract
The article examines the possibilities of forming deeper epistemological links between psychology and intersectionality. Advocating for a demarcated use of intersectionality in psychology not as a grand theory nor as a sophisticated methodology, but as a critical and flexible ‘topography’ of social hierarchies, we focus both on the particularities of this analytic position and on the shifts it entails in relation to traditional psychological approaches to social identities. We analyze the way in which this perspective radically distances itself from the positivist epistemological model that is dominant in psychology. In this context, we explore the relationship of intersectionality’s idiosyncratic gnoseology to Donna Haraway’s epistemology of partial perspectives and situated knowledges, and to Jurgen Habermas’ remarks on emancipatory interests within science. Under this prism, the paper suggests that the prospects for a more robust dialogue between psychology and intersectionality requires a distancing from the objectivist and universalistic claims that have long dominated the field, as well as psychology’s turn towards more fragmented, contextualized and interpretive epistemological directions.