Essentialist-sounding definitions can be adopted provisionally without belief in essence

Evidence

Therefore, “as a deconstructivist,” I cannot recommend that kind of dichotomy at all, yet, I feel that definitions are necessary in order to keep us going, to allow us to take a stand. The only way that I can see myself making definitions is in a provisional and polemical one: I construct my definition as a woman not in terms of a woman’s putative essence but in terms of words currently in use. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 453

Categorization

• DEFINE: Early, pre-coining articulation of the strategic-essentialism stance: definitions adopted provisionally and polemically, resting on ‘words currently in use’ rather than a woman’s putative essence — foreground text for the strategic essentialism genealogy.
• XREF: Direct precursor to Spivak’s own later coining of ‘strategic essentialism’; the reader is tracing exactly this formulation across her corpus. — connects to: Strategic essentialism meant reusing hegemonic universals, not repudiating them. — Elizabeth Grosz, Criticism, Feminism and the…, 120; Essentializing is unavoidable even in anti-essentialist critique, so it should be deployed consciously. — Elizabeth Grosz, Criticism, Feminism and the…, 125; Definitions can be held provisionally and polemically without belief in essence — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 453 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-essentialist scholars can publish under deliberately ironic essentialist titles #exemplifies (0.85)
• Nominalist definitions separate concepts from rivals rather than pursue essences #corroborates (0.80)