Anti-imperial resistance requires nation-state restructuring, not just discursive acts

Evidence

Very affluent people may come to believe that they have broken free of imperialism through acts of reading, writing, lecturing, and so forth. For human collectivities in the backward zones of capital, however, all relationships with imperialism pass through their own nation-states, and there is simply no way of breaking out of that imperial dominance without struggling for different kinds of national projects and for a revolutionary restructuring of one’s own nation-state. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 57

Categorization

• XREF: Core of reader’s materialist critique thread: reading/writing/lecturing as ‘anti-imperial acts’ is precisely the postcolonial discourse-determinism Ahmad attacks — connects to how strategic-essentialist identity performance by affluent academics differs from what is available collectively in the ‘backward zones of capital.’ — connects to: State-centered nationalism is no longer a viable anti-imperialist answer — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 595; Academic displacement of anti-imperial struggle substitutes literary critique for lived resistance. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 871; Said frames anti-imperial resistance chiefly as cultural discourse and identity — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 851 (+4 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘the anti-imperialism of the seminar room’ — why discourse-level anti-imperial practice by affluent intellectuals is structurally unavailable as a strategy to those whose subordination passes through actual nation-states.

Broader Connections

• Said frames anti-imperial resistance chiefly as cultural discourse and identity #contradicts (0.90) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 851
• State-centered nationalism is no longer a viable anti-imperialist answer #qualifies (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 595
• Academic displacement of anti-imperial struggle substitutes literary critique for lived resistance. #corroborates (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 871
• Imperialist expansion itself generated the coherence and dynamics of African resistance #contradicts (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 827
• Imperialism itself generated the resistance and revolution that opposed it #contradicts (0.80)
• Resistance itself transforms the colonized subject so that colonial rule becomes unmaintainable #expands (0.80)