No theory can exempt itself from the partial unfitness it attributes to other strategies

Evidence

A theory which allows a partial lack of fit in the fabrication of any strategy cannot consider itself immune from its own system. It must remain caught within the possibility of that predicament in its own case. If in translating bits and pieces of discourse theory and the critique of humanism back into an essentialist historiography the historian of subalternity aligns himself to the pattern of conduct of the subaltern himself, it is only a progressivist view that diagnoses the subaltern as necessarily inferior, that will see such an alignment to be without interventionist value. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1771

Categorization

• DEFINE: Extends the concept of strategic essentialism: being unwitting is only partial, and alignment with the subaltern’s essentialist conduct retains interventionist value.
• XREF: Disturbs the reader’s framing of strategic essentialism as a fully deliberate, non-collapsing stance. — connects to: Theory is valuable only when one must struggle against it — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 242; Critical theory that identifies reason with domination cannot justify its own critique — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 380; Antifoundational theories involuntarily grow their own hidden foundations

Broader Connections

• Theory is valuable only when one must struggle against it #expands (0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 242
• Antifoundational theories involuntarily grow their own hidden foundations #corroborates (0.85)
• Critical theory that identifies reason with domination cannot justify its own critique #exemplifies (0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 380