Collins developed the concept of a "matrix of domination" in "Black Feminist Thought" (1990), arguing that race, class, gender, and sexuality operate as interlocking systems of oppression structured simultaneously at personal, cultural, and institutional levels rather than as separable, additive categories. She argued that Black women's structural position as "outsiders within" - inside dominant institutions yet excluded from full membership - generates a distinctive standpoint and body of critical social thought unavailable from more centrally located positions.
Intellectual setting
Collins wrote as part of the Black feminist theoretical tradition alongside the Combahee River Collective and Kimberlé Crenshaw's contemporaneous articulation of intersectionality, developing a systematic sociological and philosophical account of how multiple oppressions interlock in Black women's lived experience.
Key ideas
The matrix of domination
Collins argued that race, class, gender, and sexuality do not operate as separate, additive forms of oppression but as interlocking systems organized simultaneously across personal, cultural, and institutional domains of power.
The outsider-within standpoint
Collins argued that Black women's structural position - inside dominant institutions such as white households or academia yet permanently marked as outsiders within them - generates a distinctive critical standpoint and body of knowledge, Black feminist thought, unavailable from more centrally located social positions.
Legacy
Collins's "Black Feminist Thought" is a foundational text of Black feminist theory and a central reference in the development of intersectionality as an analytic framework across feminist philosophy, sociology, and Africana studies.