Totalizing critical categories covertly become admission criteria that police inclusion

Evidence

But is it also the case that he means the opposite of what he actually says: not that ‘all third-world texts are to be read as national allegories’ bur that only those texts which give us national allegories can be admitted as authentic texts of Third World Literature, while the rest are by definition excluded? So one is nor quite sure whether one is dealing with a fallacy (‘all third-world texts are’ this or that) or with the Law of the Father (you must write this if you are to be admitted into my theory). — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 412

Categorization

• QUESTION: Ahmad’s diagnosis that an over-inclusive theoretical category flips into an exclusionary gatekeeping law is worth testing against how identity categories police membership.
• XREF: connects to: Formally neutral job requirements can perpetuate racial exclusion after open discrimination ends — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 1043; Resisting imposed categories requires using them, not rejecting them; Bureaucratic classification itself creates subjects who petition for reclassification — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 369 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Formally neutral job requirements can perpetuate racial exclusion after open discrimination ends #exemplifies (0.90) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1043
• Resisting imposed categories requires using them, not rejecting them #exemplifies (0.82)
• Bureaucratic classification itself creates subjects who petition for reclassification #expands (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 369