Provisional identity claims are fine if kept under internal critique

Evidence

The identity claims of Fourth World groups are different from those of new immigrants. In the cultural conformity of Fourth World groups there are plenty of attitudes which would be extremely helpful to the problems that a developed postindustrial capitalism is confronting. As long as one knows that those are provisional claims and as long as a persistent critique is generated within those movements, I think identity claims there are fine. We have to take the risk of not having an absolutist standard. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2344

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is Spivak’s operative condition for safe strategic essentialism — provisionality plus persistent self-critique. But is that condition itself sustainable collectively, or only for her as individual theorist? Directly bears on the reader’s research question.
• XREF: Clear restatement of strategic essentialism’s survival condition — provisional claims with internal critique — connecting to the book’s core Spivak/Subaltern Studies thread. — connects to: Theoretical claims lose their provisional character if stated too cleanly — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2306; Identity is constituted within representation rather than pre-existing it; Identity is now a matter of choice rather than inherited absolute truth — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 112 (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The criterion ‘provisional + persistently critiqued’ is the crux attempt to answer whether strategic essentialism can survive without collapsing into residence-in essentialism.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2344

Broader Connections

• Theoretical claims lose their provisional character if stated too cleanly #expands (0.85) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2306
• Identity is constituted within representation rather than pre-existing it #expands (0.80)
• Identity is now a matter of choice rather than inherited absolute truth #complicates (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 112
• Identity is a contradictory, multi-discursive, non-closed totality #expands (0.75)