INTERSECTIONALITY AS A term and structure was coined and described in Kimberlé Crenshaw's 1989 article, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” She opens the article by explaining that:

Crenshaw's point was that understanding how “black women are subordinated” required the centring of intersectional, multi-axis analysis. She uses “intersectionality” as the key way to reconsider the narratives of black women in court cases to understand the effects and magnitude of “compounded” harm on black women in legal situations.4 Much of her discussion of intersectionality has a legible black feminist genealogy in the work and statements of the Combahee River Collective in the 1970s and their articulation of a black feminism that addresses the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality.

In the context of digital humanities, I have argued that genealogies of criticism (often coming from the critical race and legal theory world) have been elided in discussions of digital humanities and in digital buzzwords. To discuss intersectionality is to centre the critical race work of black feminism, particularly as it unfolds in the 1970s and 80s in both organizing black feminist circles and in legal discourse. However, I am also cognizant of discussions by black, indigenous, and women of colour (BIPOC) feminists in popular, public venues that critique the dilution of the term “intersectionality” as somehow a “universal” concept for all bodies, which is a form of antiblackness.