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Muting and Mutating Suffering: Sexism, Racism, and Class Struggle

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Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age

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Abstract

Rogers-Vaughn identifies neoliberalism as an intrinsically sexist and racist project that both mutes and mutates racism and sexism as it intentionally re-institutes new forms of patriarchy and white supremacy, meanwhile claiming to promote equality, diversity, and multiculturalism. Under neoliberalism, he argues, both sexism and racism are privatized and deregulated, resulting in a loss of collective voice for both women and people of color. With the dissolution of collectives and individualization of racism, the conceptual possibility of structural racism is erased, and equal opportunity supersedes substantive equality. Meanwhile class, Rogers-Vaughn observes, is largely ignored or misunderstood as a determining issue in the lives of women and people of color. Rogers-Vaughn concludes with suggestions for how intersectionality theory, with its radical commitment to social justice and well-being, can be understood as a post-capitalist project.

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Rogers-Vaughn, B. (2016). Muting and Mutating Suffering: Sexism, Racism, and Class Struggle. In: Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age. New Approaches to Religion and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55339-3_5

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