ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 considers the academic practice of telling stories and lays out the book’s approach to the metacommentary literature, namely, to analyse it in terms of its storytelling. It contextualises this approach in relation to the broader field of scholarly works investigating the politics of feminist academic writing, explaining how it provides a method for analysing the narrative, argumentative and rhetorical techniques, forms and habits of theoretical texts. Then, the chapter lays out the specificities of this approach, the analysis of boundary-drawing through storytelling, focusing on the ways in which the metacommentary literature is actively involved in drawing boundaries around the project of intersectionality by telling a great many stories about it. Furthermore, the process of delimiting and selecting material is described and discussed, particularly in relation to the apparent tension between the choice to put a predominantly US selection of material at the centre of the analysis and the widespread conception of intersectionality as a “travelling” theory with global reach. Finally, the chapter explains how, through its focus on drawing out internal tensions and contradictions in the material, the book is situated within a broader tradition of immanent critique.
