Academic theory domesticated 1960s political dissent into textual culture

Evidence

It is also arguable, however, that dominant strands within this ‘theory’, as it has unfolded after the movements of the 1960s were essentially over, have been mobilized to domesticate, in institutional ways, the very forms of political dissent which those movements had sought to foreground, to displace an activist culture with a textual culture, to combat the more uncompromising critiques of existing cultures of the literary profession with a new mystique of leftish professionalism, and to reformulate in a postmodernist direction questions which had previously been associated with a broadly Marxist politics - whether communist, or social democratic, or inspired by some other strand in the labour movements around the globe. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 23

Categorization

• XREF: Materialist critique of discourse-turn parallels reader’s framing of strategic essentialism as discourse-first evasion — Ahmad’s charge that poststructuralism displaces class politics into textual culture connects directly. — connects to: Literary theory after 1960 retained literary specialness while denying the world outside text — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 232; Modernist classics entering university curricula in the 1960s simultaneously canonized and defused them — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 684; Post-1968 literary theory abandoned solidarity with labor movements — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 8 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Academic canonization may domesticate critical theory’s radical edge #corroborates (0.95) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 30
• Literary theory after 1960 retained literary specialness while denying the world outside text #expands (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 232
• Academic institutionalization threatens the political stakes of critical theory #exemplifies (0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 257
• Modernist classics entering university curricula in the 1960s simultaneously canonized and defused them #exemplifies (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 684
• Post-1968 literary theory abandoned solidarity with labor movements #expands (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 8
• Postcolonial literary theory obscures the political and economic materialities determining it #exemplifies (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 43
• Revisionism neutralizes a theory by deleting its praxis-demanding content #exemplifies (0.80)
• Academic history reabsorbed revolutionary newness back into serial continuity #expands (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 724
• American literary theory developed in isolation from revolutionary political history #corroborates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 657