Deployments of Intersectionality in Masculinity Studies: A Power/Knowledge Analysis

Intersectionality is increasingly used as an analytical tool to complexify the categories of men and masculinities, to shed light on the processes producing marginalized, racialized and deviant masculinities.  The paper examines the deployments of intersectionality in masculinity studies and its effects to attend to three problems that are encountered in the current state of feminist scholarship on intersectionality: 1. the increasing delegitimizing of intersectionality through its conflation with identity politics and/or the framing of intersectionality as endorsing essentialist identity categories ; 2. the whitening of intersectionality in which the critical race analytics becomes optional ; 3. the depoliticizing of intersectionality through its disciplinarization and institutionalization. Based on an extensive analysis of the ways in which intersectionality is used in masculinity scholarship, the paper asks whether these problematic tendencies are also observed in this field of knowledge. If so, what are their specific configurations and their specific effects? Does the current engagement of masculinity studies with intersectionality help to consolidate or to confront these problematic tendencies?