Literary theory’s rejection of nationalism mirrors poststructuralism’s rise

Evidence

The two moments – politically, for and against nationalism; theoretically, Third-Worldism and poststructuralism – remain discrete and epiphenomenal, even though the more outlandish of the poststructuralists have tried to combine them. What this branch of literary theory has lacked is a larger configuration of concepts that may produce a systematic periodization of its own practices and of that world to which it constantly refers, so that it may overcome the discreteness of moments and their second-order explanations. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 62

We know that this branch of literary theory privileged cultural nationalism as the determinate ideological form of resistance against the dominant imperialist culture throughout the 1970s; but then, increasingly in the 1980s, nationalism itself, in all its forms, came to be discarded as an oppressive, coercive mechanism. … But the precise terms in which this shift away from cultural nationalism has taken place would be unintelligible without taking into account the ascendancy of poststructuralism, with its debunking of all myths of origin, totalizing narratives, determinate and collective historical agents – even the state and political economy as key sites for historical narrativization. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 64

Categorization

• XREF: Anticipates and grounds the analysis applied to media/communication theory in Innis and Postman — the idea that a theoretical paradigm’s fortunes track a broader philosophical ascendancy. — connects to: Literary criticism’s relevance varies with the historical and ideological moment — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 790; Poststructuralist critique rejects nationalism wholesale instead of judging its specific historical forms — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 169; Poststructuralist Third World theory arose as a substitute for failed nationalist ideology — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 274 (+2 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 62; Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 64

Related

• Poststructuralist critique rejects nationalism wholesale instead of judging its specific historical forms (similarity 0.91)
• Poststructuralist Third World theory arose as a substitute for failed nationalist ideology (similarity 0.90)
• Poststructuralist debunking of nationalism succeeded Third-Worldist nationalism as the dominant academic counter-canon (similarity 0.90)
• Postcolonial literary theory’s rapid shift from nationalism to poststructuralism concealed material world dynamics (similarity 0.89)
• Poststructural literary theory’s nationalism critique tracked the national-bourgeois state’s rise and fall (similarity 0.88)
• Rejecting Marxism foreclosed self-critique, so poststructuralism replaced rather than corrected nationalism (similarity 0.86)
• Postcolonial theory lacks a systematic periodization of its own practices. (similarity 0.86)
• Postcolonial theory’s turn to representation displaced study of imperialist political economy (similarity 0.85)
• Poststructuralism’s rise in colonial literary theory conceals rather than explains its material-economic context (similarity 0.85)
• Cultural nationalism remains the constitutive ideology of Third World literary theory. (similarity 0.85)
• Third World literary theory effaces Marxism-rooted radical cultural heritage (similarity 0.84)
• Third-Worldist cultural theory structurally suppresses class and gender analysis (similarity 0.84)
• Frame choices that collapse politics into nationalism versus postmodernism erase socialist alternatives. (similarity 0.84)
• The ‘Third World Literature’ category originated amid socialist retreat and bourgeois-nationalist resurgence. (similarity 0.83)
• Cultural nationalism is constitutive of postcolonial theory’s theoretical stances. (similarity 0.83)