Colonial capitalism breeds an intelligentsia trapped between metropolitan theory and obscurantist indigenism

Evidence

What Namboodripad specifies at the end is a particular contradiction in the cultural logic of colonial capitalism: a certain democratization of language, some secularization of ideological parameters, some denting of insularity; but also, decisively, the creation of a dominant intelligentsia which merely oscillates between ideological dependence on the fabrications and sophistries of advanced capitalism on the one .hand, and indigenist, frequently obscurantist nostalgia on the other. The issue he finally raises is that of agency. To what extent can even the patriotic section of the bourgeois intelligentsia, divided as it is between metropolitan theorizations and idealized indigenisms, fulfil the tasks of the very anti-imperialism it so stridently preaches? Through what location, affiliation, praxis? — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1078

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s research program: Ahmad’s formulation of an intelligentsia oscillating between metropolitan theorization and indigenist nostalgia is the structural diagnosis behind ‘strategic essentialism’ — an ironic identity politics that, as Namboodripad frames it, cannot itself fulfill the anti-imperial tasks it preaches. — connects to: Comprador intellectuals reaccredit discredited colonial knowledge systems — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 411; Metropolitan theory idealized the singularized Third World as the site of cultural opposition — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 148; Colonialism produced both a decrying intelligentsia and a false nationalism — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 479 (+4 more)
• DEFINE: Articulates the precise contradictory structural position — ‘ideological dependence on advanced capitalism’ vs ‘obscurantist nostalgia’ — that the concept of strategic essentialism was meant to address but may be unable to escape.
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘oscillate’ as the operative verb for identity politics under colonial capitalism — the patriotic intelligentsia as permanently trapped in two equally false attractors rather than transcending either.

Broader Connections

• Colonialism produced both a decrying intelligentsia and a false nationalism #corroborates (0.88) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 479
• Poststructuralism’s rise in colonial literary theory conceals rather than explains its material-economic context #exemplifies (0.79) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 163
• Comprador intellectuals reaccredit discredited colonial knowledge systems #expands (0.78) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 411
• Colonialism itself generated the radical intelligentsia that opposed it #complicates (0.77)
• Metropolitan theory idealized the singularized Third World as the site of cultural opposition #expands (0.76) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 148
• Colonial intelligentsias are structurally compelled toward the colonizer’s language in public life #expands (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1534
• Colonial capitalism produced alienated private subjectivity inside the Third World too #expands (0.74) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 413