French postcolonial theory grew from the Occupation and anti-fascist struggles at home

Evidence

The inter-war years also witnessed the emergence of the first sizeable Marxist philosophical tradition in France (much later than in Germany or Russia or even Italy, but earlier and more articulated than in the predominantly Anglo-Saxon countries); the emergence also of mass labour and communist movements; the first Popular Front government; and the widely felt radicalizing influence of the Spanish Civil War. On the heels of all that came the Nazi Occupation, which gave numerous French intellectuals, especially those who actually fought in the underground Resistance, some imaginative understanding of the meaning of colonial subjection and the legitimacy of combat for liberation. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 245

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Foucault thread in Society Must Be Defended, where French thought’s engagement with colonial/race struggle is traced — this strengthens the materialist precondition claim Ahmad makes. — connects to: French structuralism’s rise followed decolonization defeats and masked rightward political drift — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 249; French anticolonial radicalism grew directly from anti-fascist and Resistance politics — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 245
• QUESTION: Does Ahmad imply the war/occupation specifically, rather than inherited French colonial history, explains why discourse-determinist theory arose in France?

Broader Connections

• French structuralism’s rise followed decolonization defeats and masked rightward political drift #complicates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 249