Cultural nationalism collapses into inverse racism because culture is singularized far from the economy
Evidence
Unlike the political category of the state) the regulatory and coercive category of law, institutional mechanisms such as political parties or class organizations like trade unions, ‘culture’ generally and the literary/aesthetic realm in particular are situated at great remove from the economy and are therefore) among all the superstructures) the most easily available for idealization and theoretical slippage. … As these categories have been historically constituted, they have been endowed with an inherent tendency towards national and civilizational singularization. The ideology of cultural nationalism is based explicitly on this singularizing tendency and lends itself much too easily to parochialism, inverse racism and indigenist obscurantism) not to speak of the professional petty bourgeoisie’s penchant for representing its own cultural practices and aspirations, virtualJy by embodying them as so many emblems of a unified national culture. … Cultural domif.lation is doubtless a major aspect of imperialist domination as such, and ‘culture’ is always, therefore) a major site for resistance, but cultural contradictions within the imperialized formations tend to be so very numerous - sometimes along class lines but also in cross-class configurations, as in the case of patriarchal cultural forms or the religious modes of social authorization - that the totality of indigenous culture can hardly be posited as a unified, transparent site of anti-imperialist resistance. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 46
Categorization
- XREF: This materially evasive idealization of ‘culture’ as a singular anti-imperialist site is precisely the kind of discourse-first move the reader traces from Spivak’s strategic essentialism into collapse — culture as the anti-imperialist unity ground parallels essentialist identity claims. Connects to Ahmad’s broader materialist critique of postcolonial theory. — connects to: Culture’s distance from the economy makes it prone to idealization — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 18; Cultural racism substitutes cultural traits for biological ones in racializing groups.
- SEED: Angle: why anti-imperialist critique recurrently displaces class contradiction onto a singularized indigenous ‘culture’ — the structural position of culture at remove from the economy makes the slippage systemic, not incidental.
Broader Connections
- Culture’s distance from the economy makes it prone to idealization
#corroborates(0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 18 - Cultural racism substitutes cultural traits for biological ones in racializing groups.
#expands(0.82)