Literary texts carry metropolitan processes of selection and classification inscribed in their texture

Evidence

By the time a Latin American novel arrives in Delhi, it has been selected, translated, published, reviewed, explicated and allotted a place in the burgeoning archive of ‘Third World Literature’ through a complex set of metropolitan mediations. That is to say, it arrives here with those processes of circulation and classification already inscribed in its very texture. About this contradictory role of imperialism which simultaneously unifies the world, in the form of global channels of circulation, and distributes it into structures of global coercion and domination, I shall say a great deal throughout this book. Suffice it to say here that even as we open ourselves up to the widest possible range of global cultural productions, it is best to keep in view the coercive power of the very channels through which we have access to those productions. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 191

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Ahmad’s core materialist critique of postcolonial/discourse-first theory; the claim that ‘Third World’ designation happens in the metropole parallels the strategic essentialism bind where the labels used ironically are still the colonizer’s. Relevant to the reader’s research via Casanova’s world literary space and Appadurai. — connects to: Non-Western literature reaches readers mediated by metropolitan selection — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 74; Third-world literature reaches metropolitan readers through metropolitan-controlled grids — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 190

Broader Connections

• Third-world literature reaches metropolitan readers through metropolitan-controlled grids #corroborates (0.90) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 190
• Non-Western literature reaches readers mediated by metropolitan selection #corroborates (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 74