Strategic identity imitation is a practiced reflex, not intellectual deliberation

Evidence

Once there is an effort to engage in the politics of subalternity-on-the-move, who questions and who answers “fly from me” is not at all clear. The only thing we know is that “be like me, be my image” can never be on the agenda, from either side. I should also emphasize that this “imitation” cannot be the slow-motion thinking-through of a raised consciousness. In the field of decisions, it can only be the sort of much-practiced reflex that shows the steps in slow motion if anyone cares to analyze after the fact; and analysis, notoriously, is inadequate to its object. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1507

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharpens what strategic/performative political imitation CAN be — reflexive practice, never a thought-through conscious adoption — directly bearing on whether strategic essentialism collapses into belief.
• QUESTION: If the imitation is ‘much-practiced reflex’ and analysis is ‘inadequate to its object,’ how can a COLLECTIVE strategically hold essentialism non-literally at all? This passage seems to imply the strategic act is only intelligible post-hoc.
• XREF: connects to: Imitation toward superiors and distinction from inferiors are complementary status forces, not hypocrisy — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 165