Intersectionality has been a debated concept in recent critical studies.
It has been both hailed as the most important contribution to gender
studies, and criticized for being an academic buzzword. In our chapter,
however, we aim to focus on the potential productive power
intersectionality might still have, for example, when critically applied
to the narratives of cultural homogeneity and the ‘ordinariness’ of the
majority. The narrative of Nordic societal homogeneity is often
constructed as unitary and unchanging – the sphere of the ordinary. The
white Nordic majority has become the norm against which the other,
presented as in need of emancipation, is defined, read and interpreted.
In such thinking, both ‘the majority’ and ‘the margin’ are stabilized
constructs, even though they both remain inherently multifaceted and
ambivalent. We turn the intersectional lens to the ‘homogenous
commonplace’ by discussing on which conditions intersectionality could
be turned towards the majority, or ‘the ordinary’. After that, we
discuss intersectionality ‘in commonplace action’, by outlining a case
study: the explicitly intersectional politics of the Feminist Party in
Finland, founded in 2016.