Embracing essentialism: A realist critique of resistance to discursive power
论证本质主义对理解抵抗管理话语是必要的，在批判实在论框架下避免还原论和决定论，并揭示后基础主义抵抗理论中隐含的本质主义假设。
This article argues that, contrary to its detractors, essentialism is a necessary concept in understanding resistance to managerial discourses. The article first suggests that essentialism, under a critical realist framing, need not suffer from the reductionism or determinism found in many 19th and 20th Century essentialized accounts of the self, arguing instead that the concept adds analytical power to explanatory theorizing. Next, taking three common post-Foundational presentations of resistance to managerialist discourses, the article proposes that, despite protestations to the contrary, each relies on essentialist representations of both discourse and the self. The article then seeks to tackle the ‘problem’ of essentialism head-on by showing its potential for both framing resistance and building bridges between the post-Foundational, realist and natural worlds.