Abstract
The long history of intersectionality as both theory and activist praxis is one that centers Black feminist and Black queer thought, traced through multiple genealogies in both the humanities and the social sciences. This chapter considers chronopolitics, race, and premodern temporalities to explore two case studies at different ends of medieval “Europe.” It first considers how gender, race, and sexuality create different ballasts to the structures of 11th-century Byzantine power. Second, the chapter examines how premodern critical intersectionality can help one rewrite an origin story of the English Empire and reinscribe Black feminist methodologies into a space that has thus far whitewashed race. In the Byzantine world, for instance, Blackness can also be read as a sign of religious devotion or asceticism for early desert saints, and Betancourt remarks on the lack of surprise or commentary about transgender masculine saints whose religious transformations include the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality.