Critical explanation cannot stand outside the structure it criticizes

Evidence

This has been a seemingly contextual explanation of our symposium. It should be noted, however, that the explanation might also be an analysis of the production of contexts and contextual explanations through marginalization centralization. My explanation cannot remain outside the structure of production of what I criticize. Yet, simply to reject my explanation on the ground of this theoretical inadequacy that is in fact its theme would be to concede to the two specific political stances (masculist and technocratic) that I criticize. Further, the line between the politics of explanation and the specific politics that my text explains is ever wavering. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 323

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A compact statement of the self-implication problem: the critique’s own inadequacy is its very theme, and rejecting it for that inadequacy concedes ground to what it attacks — a genuinely dense methodological paradox.
• XREF: This is broadly parallel to Spivak’s self-deconstructing stance on strategic essentialism itself — holding a position while disclaiming full fidelity to it — and to the reader’s whole research program. — connects to: The essentializing moment that criticism attacks is itself irreducible. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 1762; Errantry can only be told indirectly through detour; A critic of a central domain must stand outside its defining structures — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 322 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Fundamental critique of a system cannot arise from within that system #corroborates (0.95) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 133
• A critic of a central domain must stand outside its defining structures #expands (0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 322
• Critical theory that identifies reason with domination cannot justify its own critique #exemplifies (0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 380
• Critical Theory claims to cure philosophy only from outside its own boundaries #complicates (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 288