A theorist’s emphasis and elision of counterexamples can be analytically strategic, not oversight

Evidence

For Foucault to dwell at relative length on the subversive author would have meant that the performativity of the discursive formations would lose their force, and would open up possibilities that would potentially, even effectively, diminish the roles he assigned to them. It would have planted, in other words, a potent seed of doubt in the claim for the performative power of discursive formations. The claim need not be absolute (as some interpreters of Foucault, I think, mistakenly argue), but to make any claim or a sustained argument for a thesis is to stress it, elaborate it, expound it in detail, show evidence in support of it, and so on. To flesh out what are otherwise exceptions, side issues, or derivatives with the same force is to militate against the main thesis. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 346

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to general historiography-of-ideas concerns about how paradigm-builders suppress anomalies — echoes Kuhn’s treatment of anomalies in scientific paradigms. — connects to: Critical interrogation of a thinker’s flaws need not mean dismissal — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 102