Introduction: Making Middles Matter: Feminist and Gender Studies in-between Intersectionality and New Materialisms

This chapter calls for mutually enriching encounters between intersectionality studies and feminist new materialisms (FNM), encouraging feminist and gender studies scholars to seek a transversal position between these areas. It is argued that intersectional and FNM approaches, including the overlapping of the latter with posthumanities, necessitate each other in research concerned with the current societal and environmental challenges. Instead of erasing the differing genealogies and existing frictions between FNM and intersectionality studies, the chapter advocates response-able research of complex realities by embracing these fields’ co-constitutive impact while ‘staying with the trouble’ entailed by their ongoing differences. The chapter explores the intersections of intersectional and FNM perspectives by expanding on the concept of ‘the middle’. It is proposed as a productive onto-epistemological notion and methodological orientation which enables simultaneous attention to the socially situated, yet constantly and even situationally emergent, nature of intersectional differences, and to the role of material, more-than-human agencies in their formation.