Unified cultural explanations enforce coherence by fencing out contradictory identities.

Evidence

To go back to my initial example, in order to make my behavior as a female consistent with the rest of the symposium, I would have to be defined as a sexless (in effect, male) humanist— and the rest of me would be fenced out of the consistency loop. The strongest brand of centralization is to allow in only the terms that would be consistent anyway, or could be accommodated within an argument based on consistency. The consistency loop also keeps out all the varieties of inconsistencies to which any diagram plotted in language owes its existence. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 352

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘consistency loop’ and its exclusion of feminist/class/race inconsistency connects to Spivak’s strategic-essentialism problem: an identity admitted into explanation must be rendered consistent, sexless, male — the fence that makes ironic or partial identity impossible to sustain inside theory. — connects to: A subculture explanation still requires a coherence account. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 634; Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other; Culture’s inherent heterogeneity makes its own identity a perpetual threat to itself — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1891 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Culture’s inherent heterogeneity makes its own identity a perpetual threat to itself #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1891
• Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other #expands (0.80)
• Identity is constituted through relation to what is other and different from itself #expands (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 378