Western radical intellectuals must choose between granting oppressed expressive subjectivity or declaring them unrepresentable

Evidence

As they choose this strategy, they reveal the limits of the critique of humanism as produced in the West. The radical intellectual in the West is either caught in a deliberate choice of subalternity, granting to the oppressed either that very expressive subjectivity which s/he criticizes or, instead, a total unrepresentability. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1777

Categorization

• XREF: Positions the collective/individual bind: strategic subject-restoration is only available to a group project like Subaltern Studies, not to the Western intellectual caught between the two poles. — connects to: Sympathy for the oppressed can coexist with damaging representation of them — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 245; A marketable marginalized identity lets third-world writers critique the West acceptably — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 455; Political intellectuals are tempted to treat theory as transparent and foundational rather than strategic — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 1025

Broader Connections

• Sympathy for the oppressed can coexist with damaging representation of them #qualifies (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 245
• Political intellectuals are tempted to treat theory as transparent and foundational rather than strategic #corroborates (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1025
• A marketable marginalized identity lets third-world writers critique the West acceptably #corroborates (0.70) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 455