Orientalism and Third World Literature are complementary homogenizing gestures served by ethnic intellectuals

Evidence

The perspectives inaugurated in Orienta/ism served, in the social selfconsciousness and professional assertion of the middle-class immigrant and the ‘ethnic’ intellectual, roughly the same function as the theoretical category of’Third World Literature’, arising at roughly the same time, was also to serve. One in fact presumed the other, and between the two the circle was neatly closed. If Orienta/ism was devoted to demonstrating the bad faith and imperial oppression of all European know ledges, beyond time and history, ‘Third World Literature’ was to be the narrative of authenticity, the counter-canon of truth, good faith, liberation itself. Like the bad faith of European knowledge, the counter-canon of ‘Third World Literature’ had no boundariesneither of space nor of time, of culture nor of class; a Senegalese novel, a Chinese short story, a song from medieval India, could all be read into the same archive: it was all ‘Third World’ Marx was an ‘Orientalist’ because he was European, but a Tagore novel, patently canonical and hegemonizing inside the Indian cultural context, could be taught in the syllabi of ‘Third World Literature’ as a marginal, non-canonical text, counterposed against ‘Europe’ The homogenizing sweep was evident in both cases, and if cultural nationalism was the overtly flaunted insignia, invocation of ‘race’ was barely below the surface - not just with respect to the United States, which would be logical, but with reference to human history as such. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 824

Categorization

• XREF: This is the reader’s core target: Ahmad shows how ‘Third World Literature’ as a discourse-first category performs the same flattening as Orientalism — an essentialism that materialist critique (Tagore’s internal hegemony vs. Europe) exposes. Directly extends the Foucault race-struggle motif and anticipates Ahmad’s anti-strategic-essentialism position. — connects to: Asian-origin critics, not Said, cemented immigrant-centered literary Third-Worldism — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 358; Orientalist discourse simultaneously homogenizes and divides its subjects — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 286; Third World Literature as a category is built on Western language archives (+3 more)
• ADDENDUM: Illustrates the ‘material-structures-obscured-by-discourse’ move running beneath the reader’s strategic-essentialism research: Tagore’s class/canonical position is erased by the Third World Literature frame.

Broader Connections

• Asian-origin critics, not Said, cemented immigrant-centered literary Third-Worldism #responds-to (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 358
• Orientalist discourse simultaneously homogenizes and divides its subjects #expands (0.80) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 286
• Claims that homogenize ‘Third World Literature’ obscure the imperialist-determined fortunes of its producing bourgeoisie #complicates (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 86
• Local oral literatures resist absorption into any unified Third World Literature category #complicates (0.78) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 318
• Third World Literature as a category is built on Western language archives #expands (0.75)
• African-American intellectuals largely rejected Third World Literature as not encompassing their slave-derived specificity #complicates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 341