Academic displacement of anti-imperial struggle substitutes literary critique for lived resistance.

Evidence

The force of that word ‘moved’ takes one’s breath away. The struggle against imperialism now simply does not take place in the countries that are actually imperialized; it is a movable feast, and it goes where the experts go! In this sorr of formulation the ‘contest over decolonization’ becomes mainly a literary and literary-critical affair, and the elite academic intelligentsia claims for itself, in an amazing gap between fact and self-image, the role of the world’s revolutionary vanguard. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 871

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core of Ahmad’s case against discourse-determinism displacing material/class structures — the reader’s central research thread. — connects to: Discourse-first reading erases Cabral’s actual armed anti-colonial struggle. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 853; Abstract anti-imperial critique stays palatable to Western readers where concrete grievance does not — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 469; Third World literary theory’s rise marked retreat from activist anti-imperialism — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 145 (+2 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: how intellectual self-positioning as anti-imperial vanguard obscures immigrant and labor politics actually located in the imperialized world.

Broader Connections

• Third World literary theory’s rise marked retreat from activist anti-imperialism #expands (0.90) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 145
• Abstract anti-imperial critique stays palatable to Western readers where concrete grievance does not #corroborates (0.85) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 469