Part 1: Politics of DifferenceInterview with Margo Okazawa-Rey: Politics of Difference as Politics of Connection
Abstract
Margo Okazawa-Rey, a founding member of the Combahee River Collective
and a world-renowned activist and scholar, talks to Andrea Zimmermann about
challenges for a transnational feminist politics of difference. Okazawa-Rey reflects
on feminist genealogies and intersectionality from the perspective of personal
experience and points out the importance of analyzing the complex individual
relations between power regimes and difference. As feminist politics of identity have
not managed to change power dynamics fundamentally, but rather reworked them
along categories of difference, she strongly advocates coalitions of transnational
feminism. These coalitions need to take differences and contexts into account. It is
in this vein that Okazawa-Rey proposes the reimagination of politics of difference
as politics of connection.
