Process the Struggle: Research Reflections on the Epistemological Framing of Intersectionality Against Climate Apartheid

In times of climate apartheid (Sultana, 2023; Táíwò, 2020), wherein already marginalised populations and territories become Most Affected People and Areas (MAPAs) by the climate crisis, and elites keep benefiting from recovery and adaptation actions, the work of tackling interrelated systems of oppression such as racism, patriarchy, coloniality, is one of the keys to climate justice. On my PhD research, I am currently exploring the potential uses of intersectionality as a theoretical, methodological, epistemological and ethical approach.

My research is carried out with activist collectives organised and communities connected around positionalities/differences, like youth groups and Quilombola communities, in Brasil and South Africa. With them, we held workshops on the intersecting positionalities of the participants (race, gender, class, age, etc.), questioning how they relate to inequalities that affect them and their territories.

As critical social scholars doing intersectional research, we need to acknowledge the activist history of this approach, and work against academic appropriation. In my research, I try to do that by creating workshops in which the content and the format are malleable to change during the event. Moreover, we need to acknowledge and make visible the complex interconnections among the webs of power we are dealing with in our research fields if we want to tackle them. A important part of that process is to acknowledge the non-neutral assumptions we have and the powers we embody as academics, especially when researching with subaltern contingents. For this, it helps to think of epistemology as yet another power system that needs to be looked at, analysed and thoughtfully criticised throughout our research process. I hope to present some of my research reflections thus far on this direction at this session.