Investigates the contradictory terminological investments within the charges against Mina Shaughnessy's scholarship (i.e., "essentialism,""accommodationism," and lack of "materialist praxis") from poststructuralist, feminist, and Marxist quarters. Maintains, through close readings of Shaughnessy's texts, that the complexity and "self-difference" of Shaughnessy's own (often mischaracterized) scholarship and its historical-political context indeed undermine such criticisms. (SR)