Strategic essentialism is a consciously visible political deployment of positivism.

Evidence

Reading the work of Subaltern Studies from within but against the grain, I would suggest that elements in their text would warrant a reading of the project to retrieve the subaltern consciousness as the attempt to undo a massive historiographic metalepsis and “situate” the effect of the subject as subaltern. I would read it, then, as a strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1762

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the direct 1985/1988 formulation the whole inquiry pivots on — reader’s core term.
• ADDENDUM: Core definitional anchor for tracing strategic essentialism across the whole research project.
• XREF: connects to: Logical positivism began as an egalitarian political and social program — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 59

Broader Connections

• Logical positivism began as an egalitarian political and social program #responds-to (0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 59