Metropolitan institutions assemble and control most knowledge produced about the Third World

Evidence

The very presence of a “field” such as Orientalism, with no corresponding equivalent in the Orient itself, suggests the relative strength of Orient and Occident. A vast number of pages on the Orient exist, and they of course signify a degree and quantity of interaction with the Orient that are quite formidable; but the crucial index of Western strength is that there is no possibility of comparing the movement of Westerners eastwards (since the end of the eighteenth century) with the movement of Easterners westwards. Leaving aside the fact that Western armies, consular corps, merchants, and scientific and archaeological expeditions were always going East, the number of travelers from the Islamic East to Europe between 1800 and 1900 is minuscule when compared with the number in the other direction. Moreover, the Eastern travelers in the West were there to learn from and to gape at an advanced culture; the purposes of the Western travelers in the Orient were, as we have seen, of quite a different order. In addition, it has been estimated that around 60,000 books dealing with the Near Orient were written between 1800 and 1950; there is no remotely comparable figure for Oriental books about the West. As a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge. The Orient existed for the West, or so it seemed to countless Orientalists, whose attitude to what they worked on was either paternalistic or candidly condescending—unless, of course, they were antiquarians, in which case the “classical” Orient was a credit to them and not to the lamentable modern Orient. And then, beefing up the Western scholars’ work, there were numerous agencies and institutions with no parallels in Oriental society. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 511 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

It is doubtful, of course, that ‘magical realism’ has become ‘the literary language of the emergent post-colonial world’, any more than the ‘national allegory’ is the unitary generic form for all Third World narrativities, as Jameson would contend. Such pronouncements are now routine features of the metropolitan theory’s inflationary rhetoric. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 110 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Third-world literature reaches metropolitan readers through metropolitan-controlled grids — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 190; Third World Literature as a field was professionalized by metropolitan universities; Metropolitan theory inflates single genres into universal forms for the Third World — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 110 (+9 more)

Related

• Metropolitan institutions staffed by Westerners generate most Third World knowledge (similarity 0.93)
• The sheer asymmetry of knowledge production signals Western dominance over the East (similarity 0.87)
• Structural linguistic asymmetry makes the third-world text unknowable to metropolitan theorists (similarity 0.84)
• Metropolitan literatures distort any theory of third-world writing built from them. (similarity 0.83)
• Third-world literature reaches metropolitan readers through metropolitan-controlled grids (similarity 0.83)
• Metropolitan theory idealized the singularized Third World as the site of cultural opposition (similarity 0.82)
• Third World Literature is a metropolitan fabrication, not a pre-existing category (similarity 0.81)
• For imperial discourse, knowledge of the Orient constitutes power over it (similarity 0.81)
• Third World Literature as a field was professionalized by metropolitan universities (similarity 0.80)
• The Third World Literature category emerged from postwar metropolitan migration, not from textual accumulation (similarity 0.80)
• Orientalism expanded from scholarly practice to signify imperialist ideology (similarity 0.79)
• Metropolitan theory inflates single genres into universal forms for the Third World (similarity 0.79)
• Third World Literature as a category is built on Western language archives (similarity 0.79)
• Claims that homogenize ‘Third World Literature’ obscure the imperialist-determined fortunes of its producing bourgeoisie (similarity 0.79)
• The word ‘Oriental’ alone invoked a fixed, unchallengeable body of knowledge (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Third World Literature as a field was professionalized by metropolitan universities #exemplifies (0.92)
• Metropolitan theory inflates single genres into universal forms for the Third World #expands (0.90) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 110
• The sheer asymmetry of knowledge production signals Western dominance over the East #corroborates (0.90) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 511
• Structural linguistic asymmetry makes the third-world text unknowable to metropolitan theorists #expands (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 376
• Knowledge production about the East is itself an index of Western power #corroborates (0.85)
• Knowledge-producing disciplines were mobilized in service of imperialist worldviews #corroborates (0.82) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 77
• Fields of knowledge are constrained by society, culture, and institutional power #expands (0.80) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 505
• Institutional insider status shapes how Orientalists produce and legitimate knowledge #corroborates (0.78)
• Knowledge of colonized peoples produces power to control them #qualifies (0.75)