Editorial Introduction: Reflections, Connections, and New Directions from Arizona

We are proud to introduce this issue of Feminist Formations. This is the very first editorial introduction that we have written since stepping in as co-editors last August, when we moved the journal to the University of Arizona in Tucson. Our timeline for the transition of the journal means that the present issue is really the vision of the former editorial team under the leadership of Rebecca Ropers-Huilman at the University of Minnesota. We worked to assemble the essays selected under Rebecca's editorship in a way that made the most sense to us, and we did our best to keep her vision in mind as we completed the final edits and selected artwork for the cover. Rebecca's name should really be included alongside ours in this issue to mark this collaborative effort across two universities, two editorial teams, and multiple disciplines. We have much to say about our plans for the years ahead, but first we have the pleasure of situating the articles that comprise this issue.

In "Disappearing Acts: Reclaiming Intersectionality in the Social Sciences in a Post-Black Feminist Era," Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd argues against what she identifies as the commodification and misapplication of intersectionality, particularly in the social sciences. She calls readers to return to a more informed understanding of intersectionality especially as it was proposed and envisioned by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her early structural critiques and accompanying analyses of the co-determinative and experienced forces of inequality in the lives of black women. Ultimately, she returns to early critical race theorists to argue for the use of narrative as a mode of knowledge production, as well as a method of intersectionality that can critically intervene in ongoing operations of power, especially as these threaten black women's scholarly authority.

In "Speaking and Organizing across Difference: The Multiracial, Grassroots Mobilization of Child Care Workers," Mary C. Tuominen discusses the challenges of grassroots organizing and coalitional politics across lines of race and class. Focusing on child care workers, Tuominen's essay provides important insight into a form of labor that is highly exploited, gendered, invisible, and difficult to organize because of its affective, domestic dimensions. Tuominen goes further, however, and insists on noticing how and why racial and class differences among the workers get played out in organizing efforts. Finally, she draws on her participatory action research to offer an instructive example of a child care compensation organization whose deep commitment to interrogating privilege and racism helped it to address and contest the further marginalization of women of color within its organizational structure.

Dana Collins's ethnographic insights in "Performing Location and Dignity in a Transnational Feminist and Queer Study of Manila's Gay Life" allow readers to reconsider how bodies and stories, as well as desire and emotionality, are brought together in the process and practice of feminist research to value the insights of lived experience. Through a practice of deep listening, Collins is able to identify how informal sexual laborers perform what she refers to as "dignity" in everyday contexts. Her use of the concept of limited location as a spatialized position that allows researchers to be attentive to power differentials and partialities in the field contributes to feminist and queer methodologies.

In "Claiming Deviance and Honoring Community: Creating Resistant Spaces in U.S. Dyke Marches," Elizabeth Currans reconsiders the relationship between activism and performance, especially as activists work to reclaim public space for political work. In her exploration of two distinct dyke marches, she identifies a spectrum of LGBTQ counterpublics that inform and are informed by different activist practices and agendas—from liberal to progressive. She argues that these different activist orientations can best be understood by being attentive to local historic approaches to sexuality and asks readers to consider the racialized implications of different activist practices and agendas. Currans concludes by calling for continued research into what she identifies as a racial divide in LGBTQ counterpublics and their distinct claiming of public space.

In "We're Not Barbie Girls: Tweens Transform a Feminine Icon," Louise Collins, April Lidinsky...