Posing as pure outside margin delegitimizes rather than displaces center-margin binaries

Evidence

By pointing attention to a feminist marginality, I have been attempting, not to win the center for ourselves, but to point at the irreducibility of the margin in all explanations. That would not merely reverse but displace the distinction between margin and center. But in effect such pure innocence (pushing all guilt to the margins) is not possible and, paradoxically, would put the very law of displacement and the irreducibility of the margin into question. The only way I can hope to suggest how the center itself is marginal is by not remaining outside in the margin and pointing my accusing finger at the center. I might do it rather by implicating myself in the center and sensing what politics make it marginal. Since one’s vote is at the limit for oneself, the deconstructivist can use herself (assuming she is at her own disposal) as a shuttle between the center (inside) and the margin (outside) and thus narrate a displacement. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 306

Categorization

• XREF: Spivak’s shuttle-between-center-and-margin move parallels Foucault’s attention to who gets to speak the counter-history — and bears directly on whether strategic positioning is available to single subjects rather than collectives. — connects to: Binary schematization’s completeness claim masks the imposition behind any dichotomy; The center-periphery axis no longer maps intellectual location — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 230

Broader Connections

• Binary schematization’s completeness claim masks the imposition behind any dichotomy #expands (0.82)
• The center-periphery axis no longer maps intellectual location #complicates (0.78) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 230