Criticism must be judged by objective validity, not the critic’s identity.

Evidence

One is that the right to criticize is a universal right, which must be conceded to everyone, European and Asian alike; what is objectionable is not the European’s right to criticize Asians, past or present, but those particular exercises of this right which are manifest and arbitrary exercises of colonial or racial or any other kind of prejudice. In other words, criticism itself must be evaluated from some objective criterion of validity and evidence. The accompanying principle, necessarily conjoined to the first, is that the archive which we have inherited from our colonial past is, like any substantial historical archive, a vast mixture of fantastic constructs, time-bound errors and invaluable empirical information. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 460

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sets out two principles of Indian humanist historiography: universal right to criticize plus discriminating use of the colonial archive.
• XREF: connects to: Purely immanent criticism, dominant since New Criticism, is an illusion. — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 1429; Homosexuality is judged by authenticity, not by its normality. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1034; A critic’s flawed work can still catalyze clarifying one’s own thinking. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 166