French colonial defeats and occupation, not Asian decolonization, radicalized Western literary theory

Evidence

The significant fact about this earlier phase is that neither the Chinese Revolution nor the Independence of India made much impact upon the literary intelligentsiaeither in Britain as it recovered from the ravages of World War II, or in the United States as it descended into the most rabid kind of postwar reaction. Rather, it was in France that the successive shocks of the colonial wars in Indochina and North Africa, coming hot on the heels of the Nazi Occupation of France itself, tended to polarize the intelligentsia; the well-known confrontation between Sarrre and Camus was the specific expression of a much broader polarization. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 175

Categorization

• XREF: Grounds the reader’s materialist framing: politico-material events (decolonization geopolitics) shaped which theory forms traveled, connecting to Ahmad’s thesis that discourse theory itself has material determinations. — connects to: Postcolonial theory recasts decolonization as a literary-critical rather than political contest — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 393; Western literary theory’s political turn originated in crises from anti-colonial wars — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 243; Colonial discourse analysis emerged from radical theory’s retreat from immediate activist struggles — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 365

Broader Connections

• Western literary theory’s political turn originated in crises from anti-colonial wars #corroborates (0.95) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 243
• Postcolonial theory recasts decolonization as a literary-critical rather than political contest #qualifies (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 393
• Colonial discourse analysis emerged from radical theory’s retreat from immediate activist struggles #expands (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 365