Metropolitan institutions staffed by Westerners generate most Third World knowledge
Evidence
By far the greater part of the archive through which knowledge about the so-called Third World is generated in the metropolises has traditionally been, and continues to be, assembled within the metropolitan institutions of research and explication, which are characteristically administered and occupied by overwhelmingly Western personnel. Non-Western individuals have also been employed in these same institutionsmore and more so during the more recent, post-colonial period, although still almost always in subordinate positions. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 309
Categorization
- XREF: This is the institutional backdrop that makes strategic essentialism a discourse available only to those already inside the metropolitan archive. — connects to: Indian elite English departments depend intellectually on metropolitan universities — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 189; Metropolitan institutions assemble and control most knowledge produced about the Third World; Third World Literature as a field was professionalized by metropolitan universities — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 185 (+9 more)
Broader Connections
- Metropolitan institutions assemble and control most knowledge produced about the Third World
#expands(0.95) - Third-world literature reaches metropolitan readers through metropolitan-controlled grids
#corroborates(0.95) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 190 - Knowledge production about the East is itself an index of Western power
#corroborates(0.85) - Third World Literature as a field was professionalized by metropolitan universities
#exemplifies(0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 185 - Third World Literature as a category is built on Western language archives
#qualifies(0.80) - Global publishing expansion keeps power concentrated in Western metropolitan centers
#corroborates(0.80) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 57 - Knowledge-producing disciplines were mobilized in service of imperialist worldviews
#corroborates(0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 77 - Western scholars now depend on indigenous informants, re-enacting colonial knowledge production
#corroborates(0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 124 - Structural linguistic asymmetry makes the third-world text unknowable to metropolitan theorists
#expands(0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 376 - Institutional insider status shapes how Orientalists produce and legitimate knowledge
#complicates(0.72) - The sheer asymmetry of knowledge production signals Western dominance over the East
#corroborates(0.70) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 511