Contemporary literary radicalism never examines its own class determination and self-censorship

Evidence

A difficult but also pressing question for theory, one would have thought, would consist of the proper specification of the dialectic between objective determination and individual agency in the theorist’s own production. This would be an especially pressing issuenot so much in the form of censorship as of self-censorship and spontaneous refashioning - as the radical theorist takes up the role of a professional academic in the metropolitan university, with no accountable relation with classes and class-fractions outside the culture industry. The characteristic feature of contemporary literary radicalism is that it rarely addresses the question of its own determination by the conditions of its production and the class location of its agents. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 41

Categorization

• XREF: A materialist critique of exactly the type the reader sought in Ahmad: theory relocating metropolitan academics evade their own class location rather than material structures. — connects to: Literature and culture are never politically innocent but inseparable from society — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 101; Academic radicalism was an intellectual identification without everyday organizational practice. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 269

Broader Connections

• Literature and culture are never politically innocent but inseparable from society #expands (0.80) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 101