ABSTRACT
In philosophical discourse, the term refers primarily to a metaphysical doctrine, dating back to Aristotle, which holds that certain entities have essences or properties without which they could not be what they are. In radical theory and criticism, the term is applied most often to the notion of human nature and personal identity as unchanging: history does not change human nature, society does not structure the human subject; thus study of the past becomes the contemplation of an eternal present in which culturally specific differences are largely ignored. Essentialism as so defined is not only anti-historical; it is also deeply conservative, an ideological stratagem for naturalising the dominant social order, smoothing over its contradictions, and inhibiting change. For critics who purport to be rigorously historical, but who at the same time wish to use the texts of the past to effect political change in the present, essentialism is understandably pernicious.
