Anti-colonial intellectuals could speak in empire’s capitals but not their homelands

Evidence

But it is worth remembering that there are entire national configurations, such as the Palestinian, whose intellectuals cannot speak - often cannot even be - inside what are their ancestral boundaries; that there have been whole decades when a Filipino, an Ethiopian, a Kenyan dissident had to choose between death, prison or exile; those who could manage to leave departed under duress. This again is a subject of such vast proportions that I cannot even begin to speak of it with any degree of coherence, but I do want to point out the irony that numerous intellectuals born in the outposts of empire cannot speak - frequently cannot even live - in their own countries, but have arrived, alive and speaking, in what Che Guevara once called ‘the belly of the beast’ - that is to say, the metropolitan city. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 134

Categorization

• SHARE: For a friend working on exiled intellectuals or on the ‘belly of the beast’ irony specifically.
• XREF: connects to: Many colonial-period intellectuals stood outside the Western tradition. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 862

Related

• Many colonial-period intellectuals stood outside the Western tradition. (similarity 0.80)