Postcolonial ‘Commonwealth Literature’ was a British Council construction addressing material pressures

Evidence

The normalizing category of’Commonwealth Literature’ addressed these pressures in the initial phase, and challenges to this British Council construct have gathered momentum more recently. The decisive fact, in any case, is that this same period has also witnessedboth in Britain and in the United Statesvast new immigration from Asia which has supplemented, but also greatly transformed, the pre-existing Asian communities. This was a historically new kind of immigration. In Britain the working-class component remained very strong, bur large segments of the professional strata and even of fully capitalist classes also came as immigrants and settlers. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 325

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Commonwealth Literature is a British Council construct, not a genuinely ferocious force — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 891