A grounded Indian literary history must trace material dialectics of unity and difference

Evidence

One might, therefore, venture the generalization that the much more difficult task of assembling a history of ‘Indian Literature’ which does not derive its sense of unity from some transhistoric metaphysic nor from the territoriality of the existing nation-state, nor by simply assembling discrete histories of the different linguistic traditions, but traces the dialectic of unity and difference - through systematic periodization of multiple linguistic overlaps, and by g_rounding that dialectic in the history of material productions, ideological struggles, competing conceptions of class and community and gender, elite offensives and popular resistances, overlaps of cultural vocabularies and performative genres, and histories of orality and writing and print - has barely begun. Nor can it be otherwise. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1164

Categorization

• XREF: Directly names the material/class grounding Ahmad opposes to discourse-first postcolonial theory — the substance of the reading goal. — connects to: Indian literary historiography fails through idealist and Brahminical premises — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1089; India lacks institutions to systematize its multilingual literary knowledges — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1093; A materialist dialectical history of Indian literature has barely begun — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 515 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• A materialist dialectical history of Indian literature has barely begun #corroborates (0.93) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 515
• Aggregating discrete literatures into ‘Indian’ is a qualitative, not additive shift #expands (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1150
• Literary form depends on the deep logic of its raw material #expands (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 389
• Literary periodization must rest on culture-wide material shifts, not chronology #expands (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 487