Colonial capitalism produced alienated private subjectivity inside the Third World too

Evidence

For if one argues that the Third World is constituted by the ‘experience of colonialism and imperialism’, one must also recognize the two-pronged action of the colonial/imperialist dynamic: the forced transfers of value from the colonializedlimperialized formations, and the intensification of capitalist relations within those formations. And if capitalism is not merely an externality but also a shaping force within those formations, then one must conclude also that the separation between the public and the private, so characteristic of capitalism, has occurred there as well, at least in some degree and especially among the urban intelligentsia which produces most of the written texts and is itself caught in the world of capitalist commodities. With this bifurcation must have come, ar least for some producers of texts, the individuation and personalization of libidinal energies, the loss of access to ‘concrete’ experience, and the consequent experience of the self as an isolated, alienated entity incapable of real, organic connection wi.th any collectivity. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 413

Categorization

• XREF: This is the materialist core of Ahmad’s case against Jameson’s national-allegory claim — directly feeds the reader’s research on how discourse-first universalizing claims obscure internal class structure, parallel to his anti-strategic-essentialism argument. — connects to: Colonial formations internalize capitalism’s private-public split rather than escape it — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 413; Colonial capitalism produces the same public-private split it creates in the First World — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 170; Colonial domination is undone first in the colonized subject’s inner life — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 178 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: Ahmad’s logic here resembles the very anti-essentialist move he elsewhere distrusts — does he endorse a ‘Third World’ that is internally heterogeneous in class terms, or only for the urban intelligentsia?

Broader Connections

• Colonial capitalism produces the same public-private split it creates in the First World #corroborates (0.93) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 170
• Colonial formations internalize capitalism’s private-public split rather than escape it #corroborates (0.92) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 413
• Colonial domination is undone first in the colonized subject’s inner life #expands (0.75) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 178
• Educated colonial subjects suffer intellectual alienation unlike exploited laborers’ alienation #qualifies (0.72)