Political theorists cite incompatible authorities as casually as conservatives do

Evidence

Much of the avant-garde literary theory of today comes out of such moorings, intellectual and political, with a distinctly consumptionist slant. Quite apart from the remarkable claim that politics resides mainly in radicalizing the practice of one’s own academic profession, there has grown, because of equal allegiance to irreconcilable pressures, that same kind of eclecticism among the politically engaged theorists as among the more technicist, conservative ones; it is not uncommon to find, say, Gramsci and Matthew Arnold being cited in favour of the same theoretical position, as if the vastly different political allegiances of these two figures were quite immaterial for the main business of literary criticism. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 113

Categorization

• XREF: Fits the ‘Small acts of decorum…’ reading interest: the cargo-cult citation practice as a kind of theory-as-decorum, where listed bibliography signals belonging more than argument does.