We’re Here to Connect and Do Intersectional Work:
A Conversation with Dr. Céline Barry

Dr. Céline Barry

Major cultural and intimate, personal events help produce us as racialized subjects, which, in turn, helps inform the ways we think politically. The process of racialization also shifts depending on cultural and geographical context. So, how do we create a sense of community that honors the breadth of Black experiences? When we consider the ways events, such as the Berlin Wall coming down or the crack cocaine epidemic in the U.S., are depicted differently depending on where one is located, how can we create a borderless and boundless definition of Blackness? Should we even try? In any case, we must first turn inward to understand how we ourselves are produced as Black people. Through an exploration of the moments that molded us into the political thinkers we are today, we reflect on how our identities came to be produced, as well as how our politics affect how we rear our children as political actors.

We live in an identitarian era in which identity is emphasized with little vision of what we want to come of identity politics. There’s a lot of work to be done still to connect different types of Blackness and even more work to be done to create a sense of community transnationally. What I really like is that we’re here to connect and do intersectional work. We have to work across difference both within Blackness and among people of color more broadly.
—Dr. Céline Barry

Dr. Céline Barry is a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Women’s* and Gender Studies at the Technical University of Berlin. Her research interests include racism, feminism, and intersectionality in postcolonial contexts. Dr. Barry’s goal is a politicized social research practice that honors everyday experiences, allows for creative forms of expression, and provincializes academic knowledge. Dr. Barry is part of the Black Community organization Each One Teach One (EOTO) e.V., and she is active in various anti-racist initiatives, including the KOP Berlin Campaign for the Victims of Racist Police Violence and the Berlin Muslim Feminists.

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