The deployment of “strategic essentialism to achieve political goals

Some suggest the deployment of “strategic essentialism”: we should act as ifan identity were uniform only to achieve interim political goals, without implying any deeper authenticity (Spivak 1990: 1–16). Others argue that a relational social ontology, which makes clear the fluidity and interdependence of social groups, should be developed as an alternative to the reification of other approaches to identity politics (Young 2000; Nelson 2001)