Literature and culture are not coterminous with language and state boundaries
Evidence
Culture and literature, in other words, are not necessarily coterminous with linguistic formation and state boundary, especially in historical epochs preceding the emergence of the bourgeois nation-state and, in countries like India, even after the emergence of such a state; the rise of print capitalism is a variable but by no means an invariable determinant. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 487
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Culture need not align with language and state boundaries — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1089; European-style national-literature categories distort India’s actual interlingual literary relations — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1095; Pre-modern Indian literary culture was polyglot, not unilingual (+4 more)
Related
- Culture need not align with language and state boundaries (similarity 0.94)
- Pre-modern Indian literary culture was polyglot, not unilingual (similarity 0.91)
- Indian literature’s unity is an effect of geography and the nation-state (similarity 0.85)
- European-style national-literature categories distort India’s actual interlingual literary relations (similarity 0.85)
- World literature is a category impossible for imperialized nations like India (similarity 0.83)
- Enumerative national literature categories derive their unity from geography, not composition (similarity 0.83)
- India’s only unified literary intelligentsia works in English, not Indian languages (similarity 0.82)
- English, not any Indian language, forms India’s only unified national literary intelligentsia. (similarity 0.81)
- English was justified as the necessary glue for a fragmented nation (similarity 0.81)
- English literature has shaped the very categories of modern Indian thought (similarity 0.81)
- Aggregating discrete literatures into ‘Indian’ is a qualitative, not additive shift (similarity 0.81)
- India lacks institutions to systematize its multilingual literary knowledges (similarity 0.81)
- Indian literary historiography fails through idealist and Brahminical premises (similarity 0.79)
- Indian print literatures were assembled by culturally beleaguered petty-bourgeois str (similarity 0.79)
- Literary periodization must rest on culture-wide material shifts, not chronology (similarity 0.79)