Globalist frameworks can reproduce the imperial binary they oppose

Evidence

Ironically, this becomes reflected in even such a staunch critic of global capital as Frederic Jameson, as we see in Ahmad’s criticism (1987) of his universalizing essay, “Third world literature in the era of multinational capitalism” (Jameson, 1986). Once we accept the existence of global capitalism, we are inexorably drawn, it would seem, to a global version of imperial binary logic, in which the West is continually distinguished from the Third World. Ahmad’s specific objection is to Jameson’s contention that, “all Third World texts are necessarily national allegories.” This shows how the logic of globalism works: first, there is a monolithic thing called Third World literature; second, the only access such literature has to liberation, the only way it can escape globalism, is by means of that residue of empire, the nation; (and perhaps third, the only way the Third World subject can be understood is within the international academy). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3423

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Anti-universalist critique can reproduce the speculative universalism it attacks. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1082