Talk:Strategic essentialism

Deletion discussion
This article survived a nomination for deletion, following a rewrite. The discussion can be found here. Flowerparty ■ 02:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I would strongly dispute deletion for this article. Strategic essentialism is one of the more vital and crucial terms in academia today. It serves a major and intellectual purpose: if there is, ultimately, no referent for the state, woman, homosexuality, Islam, or some other idea--that is there is no there there, in the end--then we can strategically choose to treat topics as fixed, stable, and meaningful. It's a significant idea.

Indeed, this article is deserving of much elaboration. I could add some, but I'd like to see a more accomplished scholar in this area come forward.--Dylanfly 20:57, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I would also support retaining this article and expanding it. This is a core concept in university courses on critical and social theory, so it would be a shame if it were not represented on Wikipedia.

I wuold also support keeping and expanding this article. This concept is central to cultural studies and social theory, and it deserves a better treatment rather than deletion. To merge it into identity would be like merging an article on Money into the article on Economy just because the two are related--namely, it would be a bad idea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.30.73.158 (talk) 10:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Date of first appearance?
I would also like to ask: on what date did strategic essentialism first appear? In what publication first? My own recollection is in the forward to Derrida's _Grammatology_ but I might be off.

I did a little hunting. Seems like Spivak first talked about this in an interview in 1984-5: Criticism, feminism, and the institution,” interview with Elizabeth Gross, Thesis Eleven, 10/11, November/March: 175-87.--Dylanfly 21:17, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Use in the work of Irigaray
I added a citation tag after the claim that Irigaray uses this concept, based on the following reasoning: if Irigaray explicitly refers to the term "strategic essentialism," it should be referenced. If she didn't, it is not at all self-evident that she uses the concept of mimesis in the same way, so some source for this claim should be cited. I'm not too familiar with Iragaray so I can't provide a source either way, but from what I understand she uses mimesis rather as a subversive tool, i.e. employing the concept to which women were reduced to put into question this very reduction.77.251.49.84 (talk) 10:35, 19 June 2016 (UTC)