What is intersectional identity?

The idea that who "I" am is not settled by any single group. Each of us belongs a little to many groups (work, faith, politics, hobbies), and because no one else has exactly the same overlap, each of us becomes a unique individual. It comes from the sociologist Georg Simmel, and *Plurality* puts it at the base of its view of people.

If someone asked "Who are you?", how would you answer? Your company, where you grew up, the team you support, the religion you hold... Any one of these alone would not be enough. Intersectional identity is the view that a person is made up of many affiliations that overlap. The book ⿻ Plurality puts this view at the foundation of its thinking about what a human being is.

In short

Who "I" am is not settled by a single group. Each of us belongs a little to many groups: a workplace, a faith, a political cause, a hobby, a team we cheer for. Because the way these overlap is never exactly the same as anyone else's, "I" become a unique individual. This is the idea of the German sociologist Georg Simmel [1].

"Identity" here means a sense of who you are, and "intersectional" means that several circles overlap.

For example

A person living in a city. The book writes that as societies urbanize, social relationships diversify: "People work with one circle, worship with another, support political causes with a third, recreate with a fourth, cheer for a sports team with a fifth, identify as discriminated against along with a sixth, and so on." Together these make up a person's identity. "The more numerous and diverse these affiliations become, the less likely it is that anyone else shares precisely the same intersection of affiliations" [1].

A worked example (made-up numbers for illustration). Suppose there are three circles (workplace, hobby and hometown), and in each one there are 10 possible choices. That gives 10 × 10 × 10 = 1,000 combinations. With four circles, there are 10,000. The more circles there are, the rarer it becomes to meet someone with the same combination as you.

Catholics in the United States. Chapter 3-1 of the book gives an example of groups intersecting without a hierarchy. About 6% of all Catholics in the world live in the United States, and about 23% of Americans are Catholic. Neither group fits neatly inside the other [2].

The name "World Wide Web". Simmel's major 1908 work Soziologie was translated into English in 1955. The translator, Reinhard Bendix, chose to describe Simmel's idea as a "web of group-affiliations" over what he called the "almost meaningless" direct translation "intersection of social circles". The book writes that had Bendix made the opposite choice, we might talk of the internet in terms of "intersecting global circles" rather than the "world wide web" [1].

In more detail

Between two extremes

According to the book, Simmel's idea offered a third option alongside two currents in the sociology of his day [1]:

One was individualism, represented by Max Weber, which sees society as a collection of individuals. The book writes that it was deeply influential on libertarianism (the outlook that puts individual freedom first).
The other was collectivism, represented by Émile Durkheim, which looks first at the structure of society. The book writes that it was deeply influential on technocracy (the outlook in which experts manage society).

From Simmel's point of view, the book says, "both appear as extreme reductions/projections of a richer underlying theory" [1]. → Monist atomism, the three paths

Simple societies and complex societies

In simple societies, such as an isolated village, people spend most of their lives with their kin. That one circle comes to define who they are [1].

In cities, affiliations divide. On average, people come to have less of their sense of self in common with those around them. Put positively, they feel "unique"; put negatively, "isolated/misunderstood". Simmel called the individuality that arises this way "qualitative individuality" [1].

The indivisible individual divides

Simmel noticed an irony. The approach that explains society starting from individuals (methodological individualism) treats the individual as an element that cannot be divided further. Yet individuality arises precisely because a person becomes divided among many group loyalties, becoming "dividual". Simmel thought of individuals not as the starting point of social analysis but as something that emerges from complex urban society: in the book's words, "individuals become possible as an emergent property of the complexity and dynamism of modern, urban societies." The book writes this as the "(in)dividual" [1].

What it means for institutions

From here the book draws a conclusion about institutions. National identity systems try to free people from the bonds of community. But "the individual that the national identity systems seek to strip away from the shackles of communities actually emerges from their growth, proliferation and intersection." So identity systems that truly support modern life, the book says, would need to mirror this overlapping structure [1]. → Identity and Personhood

The symbol ⿻ in the book's title is a Unicode character that represents "overlapping". Chapter 3-0 explains that the social world "is neither an unorganized collection of isolated individuals nor a monolithic whole", but a fabric of intersecting affiliations, and that ⿻ captures this overlap [3]. → Plurality

What is debated

Is it the same as "intersectionality"? The word "intersectional" is shared (in Japanese, too, both are rendered with the same word), but what this section of the book draws on is Simmel's sociology. The book does not discuss how it relates to the debates about "intersectionality" in law and feminism. In a 2022 essay, Glen Weyl wrote that his thinking is closest to the line of Simmel, Dewey and others, but that he puts less exclusive focus on the particular divides emphasized by the contemporary American left, and more weight on handling which divides deserve most emphasis in a way that can win broad agreement [4].
Buterin's reading. In a review, Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, describes Simmel's theory of the individual as a model that Tang and Weyl return to again and again, one presented as a long-forgotten third way beyond both individualism and collectivism. He also names, as a way ⿻ differs from libertarianism, that plurality exists not only across society but inside each person, since one person can belong to several groups at once [5].

Where it fits in Plurality

Its home is the section on Simmel, "Georg Simmel and the intersectional (in)dividual", in chapter 3-2, "Connected Society". There the book introduces, one after another, thinkers who went beyond monist atomism: Henry George (connections of value), Simmel (identity), John Dewey (publics) and Norbert Wiener (cybernetics) [1].

The next section, on emergent publics, is presented as the "mirror image" of Simmel's philosophy. If individual identity is fluid, the social circles that make it up must be fluid too [6].

It also connects to later chapters. Chapter 4-1 looks for ways to both verify and protect identity using identities rooted in many affiliations [7] (→ Identity and Personhood, proof of personhood). Chapter 4-2 takes up the "secrecy" that Simmel considered essential to the cohesion of groups [8] (→ ⿻ publics). Chapter 5-4 writes that, instead of geography or simple demographics, "it may be possible to increasingly use the full intersectional richness of identity as a basis for considering inclusion and representation" when choosing participants for deliberation [9] (→ Augmented Deliberation).

A note to chapter 3-3 in the Japanese edition points out what Ken Suzuki's "dividual" (分人) has in common with Simmel's idea, while distinguishing them: Suzuki drew his inspiration from the philosopher Deleuze, whose perspective is more biological [10]. → Nameraka Society

Sources

Plurality, 3-2, section "Georg Simmel and the intersectional (in)dividual" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 3-1, section "From science to society" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-1/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 3-0 "What is ⿻?" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-0/eng/ ［CC0］
E. Glen Weyl, "Why I Am A Pluralist" (2022), footnote — https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/blog/why-i-am-a-pluralist/
Vitalik Buterin, "Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell" (2024-08-21) — https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/08/21/plurality.html
Plurality, 3-2, section "John Dewey's emergent publics" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 4-1, section "Identity as an intersection" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-1/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 4-2 "Association and ⿻ Publics" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 5-4 "Augmented Deliberation" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-4/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, Japanese edition, 3-3, note 197 (in Japanese) — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/jpn/ ［CC0］

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